


Five Miles Out

by Mslollywillowes



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Armitage Hux Has Feelings, Armitage Hux Has Issues, Armitage Hux Needs A Hug, Armitage Hux is Not Nice, Brendol Hux's A+ Parenting, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Eventual Happy Ending, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, Force Sensitive Finn, Gingerpilot, M/M, Nobody Dies, Not Canon Compliant, Past Child Abuse, Post TROS, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Redemption, Rey Needs A Hug, Slow Burn, This isn’t anti-reylo but reylo definitely does not exist in this fic so buyer beware and all that, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, also Leia is still alive in this sorry I don’t make the rules, everyone needs a hug let’s be real, finnrey if you squint, hux is a really good engineer, poe dameron's enemy flirtation skills, redemption arc, rey and hux bond over their kylo ren shaped ptsd, some horror elements
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-04
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:35:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 22
Words: 72,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22564093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mslollywillowes/pseuds/Mslollywillowes
Summary: Struggling to adapt to peace, Rey and Poe find an unlikely ally in their attempts to give a disenchanted Resistance purpose.
Relationships: Armitage Hux & Rey, Poe Dameron/Armitage Hux
Comments: 463
Kudos: 414





	1. Convergence

**Author's Note:**

> my dudes the rise of skywalker really bummed me out so here have my longform gingerpilot fix-it that tries to stick as close to canon as possible. i'm the world's most casual star wars fan so have handwaved a bunch of stuff here that probably doesn't make sense/wouldn't stand up to close analysis. i just wanted gingerpilot guys.

_What do you do when you're falling,_

_You've got 30 degrees and you're stalling out?_

_And it's 24 miles to your beacon;_

_There's a crack in the sky and the warning's out._

“I don’t like the process.”

“No.” Rey turned slightly as she and the general broke the back of the hill, looking down over the little valley forested with refugee tents. Smoke was rising from the long pavilion near the centre where dinner was about to be served: crisped venison tonight, the one foodstuff that seemed in plenty these days; a former delicacy that had now become a staple.

Leia huffed impatiently as she plunged her stick into the blackened earth, hiking herself up to where the crest flattened out. Her stick was more of a straight-headed crook, taller than she, smooth to the touch and gnarled where her fingers gripped it in a fist. Rey could feel her annoyance at having to use it, but it looked impressive, and she could probably hit people with it in a satisfying kind of way.

“It’s important that people are allowed to retain their dignity,” Leia said. “Packing them in like crates and making them beg for their sustenance degrades them worse than the First Order ever could. These people were shopkeepers, teachers, engineers six months ago.” She thrust her stick through an especially dense fall of dead leaves, raking them apart as she walked. “ _We_ have done this to them.”

Rey pushed her hands deeper into her pockets. The wind was sharpening as the sky opened out, its voice a hollow roar in the distance as it flanked the edge of the pine forest.

“It’s only temporary,” she said, knowing as she said it that it was largely a useless platitude. “No one wants them to stay like that forever.”

Leia gave a cynical “ _Har_ ” at that. They had reached the ice-hardened track that lead to the old farmhouse where the Resistance had established its base of operations, its outbuildings now overflowing with tech and commlinks and ammunition. A boundary had been set up in a square mile around it, encompassing the mouth of the forest and the expanse of the refugee camp, sensors tuned to the magnetic oscillation sparking off a flashpoint of neutralising energy that should, in theory, cripple any covertly approaching enemies in their tracks. So far, they hadn’t had need to test it. There had been plenty of false alarms, sirens at night that spread panic like an electrical current. Rey kept her blaster loaded, checking the safety every time she went to bed. Her lightsabre hadn’t left its corner in the heavy trunk under her bed for months, but – well, _that_ was a different matter entirely.

As for the person responsible for pioneering the alarm system – that was something else she didn’t quite want to think too closely about yet. So much of the tech responsible for keeping them safe these days as they moved from foxhole to foxhole owed its origins to First Order engineering. It felt like an exchange steeped in blood, a reciprocation so unholy that Rey almost felt nauseous at the cold pragmatism of it – yet here they were, alone, hunted, but alive.

“Where do you honestly think we’ll go from here?” Leia continued as they crunched down either side of the track. “I’ve been at this game for longer than I care to remember, and what’s left of the Senate would be pleased as punch to let everyone think we’d manage to chase the Final Order back into whatever hell it came from. But you can’t keep a lid on wickedness, Rey. That’s what that is.” She jerked her thumb over her shoulder in the direction of the camp.

“We’re going to help them rebuild. What happens in the long run is the important thing.”

“Oh, the big picture’s very nice when you’re not living inside the frame.”

“Very pithy, General,” Rey said, stealing a little sidelong smile at the other woman.

As they crossed the yard in front of the house, stepping over the thick, black wires that snaked across the gravel to the hulking generator linking the commbuoys to myriad Resistance ships, Leia suddenly said, “You heard much from Finn recently?”

“He’s...” Rey hesitated; it had been her decision, one of those unforgiving instances of when the ideal of Leia’s bigger picture seemed too much to bear, but Finn, Poe and Chewbacca being deployed back to Exegol space to scout above planet for something, anything, that hinted at how Palpatine had begun to accrue his power again while Rey remained guarding the stragglers of the Resistance was a choice she had found hard to bear. Not because she didn’t think they could handle it – there was a reason they were both Resistance generals now. But ever since returning from Exegol herself, ever since Ben and the emperor and the cold, sick knowing of her past – Rey realised that at some point she would have to face the inevitability of it. The war had ended, but of course it never really would. And Jedi had fewer choices than most when it came to personal sacrifices. She didn’t need Luke’s books to know that.

She couldn’t decide whether it was worse or slightly better knowing the truth about Finn. It had spilled out of him one evening before he and Poe left for Exegol, his words sloppy and earnest and brimming with something akin to pain following the crate of beers they had half-worked their way through. Once he said it, Rey realised with some surprise that she had known almost all along: that he had felt the Force calling to him for years, a whisper against his mind that he had only begun to understand after meeting her and seeing how it manifested itself through the long, taut lines of her body. _You looked at me like no one ever had_. She had hugged him so fiercely then that neither of them could see the tears in each other’s eyes. Of _course_ she’d help him. They would find a way through this together.

Exegol then had been unavoidable, or as Poe had put it, “Squeaky wheel gets the grease. Fuck it.” Rey wasn’t sure how much he knew, how much Finn had told him. Either way, he had seemed eager to get away from the Resistance camp for a while. Rey suspected it had something to do with Hux. Poe had won the dubious honour of consulting with the former general over some of the more complex tech blueprints Hux had brought with him after he escaped from the _Steadfast_ , and Rey could only imagine how much _that_ particular privilege was wearing on him. Still, even she had had to grudgingly admit to some admiration for the sheer amount of _stuff_ Hux had managed to smuggle with him. The blueprints were easy enough, though she was admittedly baffled by how he had managed to download half of the First Order’s intel from its encryption server before fleeing, probably _while_ fleeing – most of his high level security clearance had been revoked after Crait, and there was no way he had been allowed that kind of access on Pryde’s watch. As it was, the intel was stored on a tiny chip that had been embedded in the reedy muscle of Hux’s insubstantial bicep. The Resistance had removed it with a sterilised knife and no anaesthetic, and Hux hadn’t so much as flinched.

Useful as the tech was, what was perhaps even more extraordinary was the amount of weapon hardware Hux had secreted about his person. The slender, silvery monomolecular blade he had kept hidden up his sleeve was only the start of it; during the strip search the Resistance had subjected him to following his surrender to them, a count of no less than fifteen other knives had been recovered from him: four concealed within the heavy fabric of his military tunic, four more in his greatcoat, three actually _sewn into_ the sleeves of his greatcoat and four more hidden in the lining of his boots. It was impressive. And terrifying.

“The man’s a walking cutlery drawer,” Leia had quipped darkly to Rey and Poe following the confiscation of Hux’s little armoury.

Now Rey said, rather limply, “He’s fine.” That same old guilt washed through her. “I hope he is, anyway.”

“Still angry with you then.”

Rey smiled. Trust Leia to read her like a book.

They both paused outside the farmhouse door to kick snow from their boots. “It’s been – a lot for him,” Rey said. “I’m talking to him tonight so hopefully I’ll get the score on what he, Poe and Chewie have been up to.”

“Don’t let him make you feel guilty.” She looked up at the sudden seriousness in Leia’s voice. The older woman was still bending forward slightly, but she glanced to meet Rey’s gaze, a loose strand of her greying hair blown across her cheek. “We always feel responsible for those we love, but there are some things we can’t control. What you’re doing is bigger than any of us.”

“Bigger than the big picture, eh?”

Leia’s mouth was quirked wryly as she straightened. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

The low-ceilinged kitchen was dim and baking, an open range fire throwing out heat and shadows that jostled smokily across the walls. Commander Gratrix and her direct subordinate Corporal Rigby were the only people in the room, both stripped to their fatigues. The commander looked up as Rey and Leia entered. “You’ve finished early, General,” she remarked. “Did you speak to the girl?”

“That child’s been interrogated like a criminal since she got here,” Leia said. “I think our questions can wait for a night.”

“We can’t afford much more of a delay.” Gratrix tapped her fingers against the report that was lying on the table in front of her. “I have already received word from my contact. There’s a First Order holdout a day north from here– we need to take it out before they get wind of our location.”

“What?” Rey stopped in the act of pulling off her jacket. “We haven’t even secured this area yet, how can they expect us to spare the resources for another campaign?”

“You may well ask,” Gratrix said sharply. “Our requisitions have been delayed by refugee traffic in the system. If we are to move within the time specified, we may have to request further backup.”

Rey breathed out through her nose. They _needed_ Finn and Poe back.

“I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous in my life,” Leia was saying. “Actually, no: this is the Senate we’re talking about. This is _precisely_ their level of ridiculous.” She lowered herself into one of the Windsor chairs by the fire, stretching out her bad leg.

“Complain all you wish, General,” Gratrix said. “We are operating within a highly pressurised timeframe. If we are to push the First Order forces back sufficiently to eradicate their influence in the system, we will need to move swiftly.”

Rey sighed. For all their defeat of Palpatine and his Final Order, the dregs of the First still lingered like ghosts at the edges of a waking nightmare. Clearly this was weighing on Gratrix too.

“Which reminds me,” she said, turning to look at Rey, her fingers still resting lightly against the report. “Has our little defector come up with anything useful recently?”

“Well, he’s still cooperating.” Leia was leaning forward in her chair, her fingers kneading the muscle in her calf. She was still trying to hide the pain, but Rey could see it etched into the lines of her face.

Gratrix made a soft sound of disgust. “Of course he is. He doesn’t exactly have a choice. We’ve got his shrivelled bollocks in a vice and he knows it.”

Leia lifted an eyebrow at that, but kept her gaze on her leg. “He’s given us more tech and intel than he needed to. And he’s the reason three of our best soldiers are still alive. I don’t like the man any more than you do, but he’s already had plenty of opportunity to double cross us.”

“One would almost think you have a soft spot for him, General Organa.”

“Call me old-fashioned, Commander, but I still like to believe in the virtues of de-radicalisation.”

“I’m just interested in hearing about anything that justifies our continuing to keep him alive.”

A flicker of frustration crossed Leia’s perfectly neutral expression. “Commander, we’re no better than him if we start executing our enemies because they stop being useful to us.”

“Bullshit. I don’t care what his excuses are – he’s lucky he wasn’t court martialled the moment he showed up here with his tail between his legs. If he doesn’t get that descrambler working soon, I don’t see any reason for us to keep wasting rations on him.”

Which would be a valid complaint, Rey thought, if Hux actually _ate_ anything of note. From what she could tell, the man had been subsisting on the most meagre of scraps ever since he was taken in by the Resistance, and apparently through choice. He had been injured when he first arrived, Finn’s blaster shot to his leg healing badly and several of his ribs broken from the impact of a separate shot to the chest, the body armour he had been wearing under his uniform only able to muffle so much of the blast. Rey hadn’t been involved in any of the medical treatment administered to him, hadn’t been interested and frankly thought it monstrous that any Resistance aid should be spent on the butcher of Hosnian System. But since then, Hux had barely troubled them for anything bar the paltriest necessities. On the few occasions that Rey saw him around camp (which was almost never – he was under house arrest as much for his own safety as for anyone else’s), he always managed to look remarkably put together for someone who never ate and never slept, if the gossip had any truth in it. A largely disbanded army sitting on its hands while it waited for something, _anything_ to happen didn’t leave a lot of conversational options, and thus rumour-mongering about General Armitage Hux went into overdrive. He was probably scared of being poisoned, most agreed, so that’s why he almost never ate. He was fearful of having his throat slit in his sleep, or worse, so he only allowed himself to close his eyes for minutes at a time lest he find a cold blade buried in his heart. He was trying to commit some protracted, agonising sort of suicide, others argued; he had already been thin and was growing thinner by the day. He was sick – _always_ sick: an entire life enclosed aboard airless starships played havoc with your immune system, after all.

Gratrix angrily pushed the report away from her. “I want the girl interviewed by noon tomorrow. No bleeding hearts this time,” she added, directing a glare at Leia. “And if you get hold of Dameron anytime soon, tell him I want his ass back here asap.”

“The worst thing that ever happened to the Resistance was that woman being made a commander,” Leia said as she and Rey made their way up the cramped wooden staircase to their rooms.

“She’s under a lot of pressure.”

“Oh please. I knew her when she was just a greensplit major. She’s always been an uppity, hard-hearted piece of work.”

“Gratrix is just doing her job.”

“You’d better get hold of Finn and Dameron before she has them raked over the coals too.” They had paused on the landing outside Rey’s room, and Leia took the opportunity to lean a shoulder against the painted woodchip wall. She was trying for casualness, but Rey could tell her leg was hurting her.

Rey laughed, a little weakly. “I didn’t think it was a good time to break it to her that they’re still probably about a million clicks away.”

Leia put a hand on Rey’s shoulder, her fingers hard and cold through the thin material of Rey’s shirt. “Don’t worry. Those boys are good, but they’re not essential to our success by any means. We don’t need them. No offense,” she added, her smile sidelong, mischievous.

“You know, I’d be happy if they were completely incompetent and happy to stay at home all day.”

“These men will have ideas. Goodnight, dear heart.”

“Goodnight, Leia.” The woman gave Rey’s shoulder one last squeeze, and stumped off down the turn in the corridor. Rey let herself into her bedroom.

She turned on the commlink so it could warm up while she hid the mess of books and papers on her bed under the blankets and pulled them straight. She didn’t really know why she was bothering; it wasn’t like Finn and Poe would care. But she supposed she wanted to at least give the appearance of having things in hand, to some extent anyway.

The commlink was humming gently and Rey set the timer on it. She’d been saving up credit for the last fortnight so she could have this conversation with Finn; she thought she’d get a good half hour out of it. She hoped that would be enough.

Predictably, the commlink timed out during its first two attempts at connecting. During its third try, Rey held her breath as she watched the dial light up, the signal flexing in strength. All being well, the comm on the other end should be ringing.

The screen abruptly came alive, filling with an image of the interior of the _Falcon_ ’s crew quarters, which was quickly blocked out by an extreme close-up of Poe’s chin. Rey sat down on the bed, knitting her legs together.

“Hang on, hang on.” Poe’s voice was excited, and the screen swung erratically, displaying the crew quarters’ ceiling, a quick shot of the grimy floor, and the scuffed toes of Poe’s boots in quick succession. A pile of old datapads was pushed out of the way on a table, and Poe reappeared in frame, his face caught up in a grin, his dark curls falling erratically across his brow. Somewhere behind him, she heard Chewie bellow a greeting. Rey felt herself leaning forward involuntarily, her own smile broadening.

“Hi,” she said.

“Rey, _hi_. Finn!” Poe turned to yell over his shoulder. “Rey’s on the comm!”

“You okay?” She was frustrated and slightly disappointed by how stilted she sounded, but the satellite delay created such an artificial atmosphere that she found it hard to believe that she was actually talking to them.

“We’re great.” Poe swung back to face the screen. He was talking quickly, slightly breathless and impassioned in he way he had when he had a scheme on the boil. “Listen Rey, we’re onto something here. _Finn_!” He turned his head to shout again. “Get your ass in here, buddy.”

“What’s Finn – ” she began, at the same time as Poe said, “We’ve found the – ” They both hesitated as they realised they were talking over each other, before Poe barrelled on – “Look, Rey, we’ve found it – we’ve found the _Finalizer_ , what’s left of it anyway. Do have any idea how much valuable _shit_ that thing will have on it? Weapons schematics, star maps, slicer codes – ” He thumped the open palm of one hand with the edge of his other as he listed. “But that’s not the best bit – Finn, it’s _Rey_!”

“That’s – incredible,” Rey heard herself saying limply. She had a feeling Poe hadn’t even noticed her speak. That old misplaced resentment was gnawing at her again – they were out there _doing_ something, taking action, while she was stuck here, and shouldn’t it be the other way around? And where was Finn anyway?

Poe’s handsome, open face was almost glowing with triumph when he turned back to look at her. He leant forward, his elbows resting on his knees, his hands gesturing. “Here’s the kicker, right. If the transponder’s IFF is still working, we can use that to bypass any system that is still under First Order control. They will _literally_ never see us coming.”

“The Identify Friend Foe?” Rey repeated. For the first time in what felt like months, a whisper of excitement stirred beneath her skin. “I mean, we’d need to retrofit it with Resistance command protocols but – there must be a way of doing that.”

Poe was nodding. “Exactly. We just need to find a way onto the _Finalizer_ wreck. It’s stuck in Exegol’s orbit at the moment. From the looks of it, its gravity stabilisers have been destroyed, but if we can get the command codes, we might be able circumvent the manual override and bring it in on auto. But we’d need to disable its defence systems first - ”

“Poe – ” She cut across him, unable to hold the words in any longer. “Where’s Finn?”

Poe’s face flickered through a small spectrum of discomfort. He cleared his throat, leaning back away from the screen. “He’s – he’s still kinda mad, Rey. I think he said he was going to check the escape pod again or something.” He shrugged helplessly. “I’m sorry. He’ll come around when he’s ready, you know he will.”

“It’s ok. It’s ok.” It wasn’t, but she didn’t have much else she could say.

Poe ran his hand back through his hair, pushing it up and letting it fall more haphazardly across his forehead. It was a gesture that for a moment made him look bewildered, vulnerable. “I think we’d all be a lot better off if we could, you know – ”

“Sleep,” Rey finished with him, softly. They were both silent while the word whispered its way across shoals of starlight.

“Anyway.” Poe straightened, his manner brisk again, that old easy smile back in place. “I say we go get that IFF.”

“I’m coming with you.”

“Of course. Rose too yeah? The old gang back together.” He took a deep breath, his gaze absent, contemplative, as he seemed to look past her into his own thoughts. “I guess we just need to find someone who knows enough about First Order engineering to hack those command codes.”

Rey pressed the nail of her thumb against the flesh of her palm. The silence hung between them for a moment before she spoke, her gaze meeting with his a light year away.

“I think we both know who.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just a quick note on my characterisation of leia here: while she hasn't made the ultimate sacrifice, losing han and ben has jaded her, as has the state of the post-war resistance, and she's basically not-dealing with her trauma in the same way rey isn't. everyone is just really tired.


	2. Malice Prepense

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> thanks so much for the lovely feedback, guys! i've got most of this story outlined so am hoping to update fairly regularly. absolutely thrilled that people are enjoying reading this as much as i'm enjoying writing it.
> 
> this chapter: hux schemes and poe flirts, so basically default setting for both our brave heroes ;)

The cold of this most miserable of planets was seeping into his joints, as surely as he could feel a cold creeping into the back of his throat. Again. This would be his third head-cold in as many months. Hux had never been so continually, persistently, infuriatingly _sick_ before in his entire life, but then he could probably count the number of planets he had stepped unprotected onto on a single hand. It was probably a small miracle that he hadn’t gone into anaphylactic shock at his first taste of unsterilized food. Which was to say nothing of the people. Stars, the unwashed, milling, grabbing _people_ , who put their hands in everything and touched each other constantly, and kissed with a sort of wilful indecorousness that had shocked Hux so profoundly when he first saw it that he had to look away, his face hot. It was bad enough that he had been forced to seek amnesty from them in the first place; the fact that there always seemed to be someone, somewhere, putting their _mouth_ on something was mortifying. No wonder Hux couldn’t go five minutes without catching ill.

He subtly tweaked at the collar of his greatcoat, pulling it closer around his throat, before his hands returned reflexively to clasp together behind his back. He supposed he should be grateful to the infinite mercies of the Resistance that they had allowed him to keep his gaberwool coat to stop himself freezing to death on this wretched block of ice suspended in _stars knew_ what part of the galaxy – the First Order insignia patch torn off the shoulder first, of course. Near everything else he had brought with him from the _Steadfast_ – not that there was much – had been immediately requisitioned, repurposed, his uniform made into rags to tie around the rackety exhaust pipe of one of their limping spacecraft, or bandages to help splint an open fracture on a screaming child; his beloved textbooks carted off to be scanned and re-translated, and then probably torn up for lavatory paper or something equally ignominious. The Resistance was nothing if not resourceful. Hux would have found himself admiring the economical grace of their efficiency if he wasn’t seething with the indignity of it, the almost politely judicious stripping of his identity like carrion birds plucking desiccated flesh from a long-dead corpse. What was there left of him to _take_? Ren and Pryde had already seen to that.

Several metres uphill from him, the younger of the two Resistance soldiers shifted restlessly on his feet. He was holding his blaster in a sloppy, arrogant sort of way, his one hand resting on the butt of the weapon rather than pinioning the trigger. If he hadn't been divested of all his own weapons, Hux could have turned on his heel and had his monomolecular blade pressed into the fleshy underside of the boy’s jaw quicker than the young soldier could have disengaged the safety catch – which he had _also_ neglected to remove. Hux had never been strong, but he had always been fast. He _had_ to be. He almost found it insulting that the Resistance had put him under guard of these two indolent fools, the older of the pair barely stifling a yawn as he gazed absently across to the dark treeline where the wind was rising in a low, lonely note. There was another soldier, a girl who didn’t look much older than sixteen with close-cropped hair and an angry, flexible expression, who sometimes supervised Hux on these bi-weekly walks and who was exceedingly more diligent in her duty, her eyes restless as they bore into Hux’s back, her hand poised in readiness to fire at any sign of misbehaviour. Hux could virtually _feel_ her willing him to give her reason to shoot him – probably in his spine first, to paralyse him, then in each of his limbs, before finally putting him out of his misery with a blast to the head. It would be a mercy for everyone involved if she just got on with it, frankly.

The icy wind, or his rapidly developing cold, or a miserable combination of the two was making his nose run, and of all the frantic, split second things he had thought to bring with him on his desperate flight from the _Steadfast_ , a handkerchief had certainly not been one of them. Hux sniffed softly and lifted his hand again, using the exposed edge of his wrist between his coat sleeve and his glove to press gently against the side of his nose. The small indignity of it was almost unbearable, and he was fairly certain he was going to sneeze soon as well.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the younger Resistance soldier stiffen suddenly, nearly dropping his lazily slung blaster as his hand flew into a clumsy salute. The older one was still looking towards the trees and didn’t react until the other boy clipped out, “General!”

Hux jerked slightly at the invocation of his old title. It still _was_ his, he thought furiously, his hands clenching where he held them firmly against his straightened spine. He may not be part of the First Order anymore, but _that_ was something they couldn’t take away from him. The Resistance would dismantle him piecemeal, would prise and pull apart and peel back every last vestige of him until he owned nothing and existed even less, calling him _prisoner_ , or _Empire trash_ , or _Hugs_ if you were Dameron – or something far more colourful and descriptive in an array of vernaculars Hux only had the vaguest familiarity with. But if the Resistance believed themselves of possessing the authority to strip an officer of their rank, it wasn’t one Hux cared to recognise.

He didn’t turn to look, but he heard Dameron’s comfortable reply – “At ease, boys” – and repressed the urge to roll his eyes. He didn’t have the energy. Well, wasn’t the insufferable flyboy just _adoring_ the breathless adulation that accompanied him everywhere he went these days. No doubt he believed his recent instalment as galaxy-beloved hero to be an entirely justified culmination of his glorious destiny. Hux did not want to talk to Dameron today; not that he ever did, under ordinary circumstances, and not that his particular preference on the matter would be of any interest to Dameron anyway. But he was starting to shiver from the cold, and his eyes were feeling gritty and watery from the snap of the dry, frigid wind, and he just knew his face would be pinched pink and white and blotchy in a way that made him look tremulous and petulant. He could hear Dameron swaggering up to him right now, the acting-general’s boots crunching softly across the frozen ground.

“Hey Hugs.” Dameron’s voice was conversational, as it always was, as though he were passing the time of day with a neighbour of whom he possessed the most disinterested knowledge. Naturally, the faint prickle in Hux’s sinuses chose that moment to sharpen suddenly. He lifted a hand in an imperious sort of way to make Dameron wait, before he turned away and attempted to smother a short fit of soft, ticklish sneezes into his arm.

“Bless you,” said Dameron when Hux turned back towards him, blinking a little. Dameron laughed, not unkindly. “You sneeze like a kitten. Are you sick? Here – ” He fished in the pocket of his jacket, eventually producing a small, dented tin that he held out towards Hux. Hux eyed it warily without reaching for it.

“It’s nutrient paste,” Dameron said, as though this were obvious. “Military grade. It’s packed with vitamins, it’ll do you good.” He jiggled the tin at Hux encouragingly.

“I’d rather eat a dehydrated bantha,” Hux said.

Dameron shrugged. “Good luck finding that here. Sure I can’t tempt you?” At Hux’s thunderous glare, he grinned and pocketed the tin again.

Hux looked back towards the skyline. Just because Dameron was right there didn’t mean he was obliged to speak with the man. The smaller of this planet’s two distant suns was beginning to dip towards the horizon, its light caught in the shimmering, translucent coruscance of the planet’s atmosphere. It gave the effect of making the little sun look curiously doubled, its reflected twin haloing the other like a ghostly patina that Hux saw over and over as he blinked, an afterimage superimposed on his retina. Beside him, Dameron had his hands in his pockets and was leaning his weight speculatively on one leg as he gazed in the same direction as Hux, as though they were sharing some sort of companionable appreciation for the view and Dameron didn’t currently have two of his soldiers training their blasters at Hux’s back. Since the acting-general had appeared they were both suddenly being extremely capable at their jobs.

“You know, I didn’t even realise this planet existed until we pinged it for a base,” Dameron said, still in that same irritatingly casual tone. “Weirdest solar cycle in this part of the system. Good visibility though – we can see out, not much can see in. Did your bunch know about it?”

Hux assumed by _your bunch_ Dameron meant the First Order. He lifted his chin a little, feeling the edges of his mouth turning down in displeasure. Dameron laughed.

“I guess a place this small isn’t exactly on the radar for system annihilation, huh? Who needs to know stuff about a planet if you’re not going to bother blowing it up?”

“What do you want, Dameron?” Hux said tersely.

Dameron held both his hands up, a look of badly feigned innocence on his face. “Hey, can’t a guy pass the time of day with his favourite war criminal without needing a reason?”

“You have every reason to be elsewhere, Dameron, trying to keep this farce you call a winning side afloat.”

“Guess I just like your company _that much_ , Hugs.”

Hux squeezed his hands together tight enough to hurt, tight enough for his nails to dig crescents into his palms if he hadn’t been wearing gloves. There was a treacherous heat in his face that made him almost more furious than Dameron.

“Okay, I’ll cop to it.” Dameron gave an artless sort of shrug, scuffing his heel against a clump of hardy-growing thistle that was straggling out of the ground in front of him. “I’m not just here for you scintillating company and sparkling conversation, which I know – ” that same placatory gesture with his hands, emphatic – “ _I know_ is hard to believe, because boy oh boy Hugs, we all know what a laugh riot you are.”

“What excellent use of Resistance resources this is,” Hux said, letting the sneer he could feel curling his upper lip colour his voice freely. “Their so-called _best fighter pilot_ wasting his time making petty jibes at a prisoner.”

“Hugs, you’re kinda hurting my feelings here – you are an honoured guest, just one who has to wear chains when he goes to take a piss.”

Hux drew a sharp breath at that, turning half towards Dameron as he rasped out, “How _dare_ you – ” but one of the Resistance soldiers took a meaningful step forward as the other hefted his blaster to a shoulder-aim, his young, soft face suddenly tense and alert. Dameron moved quickly too, putting himself in-between them, one hand lifting palm flat towards Hux, the other making a smooth groundward-gesture towards the guards – it meant _stand down – ease off – it’s ok_.

“I think we’re all living on our nerves at the moment,” Dameron said, his voice soft, as the soldiers returned uneasily to their stance further up the hill. A dark coil of his hair had fallen across his forehead during the altercation and he pushed it back with a thoughtless, easy gesture, rumpling the rest of his hair in the process. Hux looked away.

There was a small beat of silence, during which Dameron seemed to be engaged in some protracted inner dialogue with himself (the way in which emotions flew so nakedly across his face both shocked and appalled Hux) and Hux tried to concentrate on staving off the deep wave of shivers that was threatening to overwhelm him. He was so cold by now that he had to hold his jaw tense to keep his teeth from chattering. It was well beyond the single hour he was generally allotted to leave house arrest for exercise and fresh air twice a week, but clearly the sacrifice of his comfort at the expense of Dameron’s sense of humour was more important than adhering to prisoner protocols. He sniffed and took a little, startled breath, which caused Dameron to look across at him again, but Hux had already turned his back to him and was attempting to stifle another desperate fit of rapid, high-pitched sneezes against his wrist. He was breathless when he was finally able to lower his arm and stiffen his posture again, attempting to tug the ragged remnants of his dignity back around himself like a protective cloak. The sneezing had barely given him time to draw breath between each one, and he felt light-headed, prickly, and absolutely raw with humiliation.

“You _are_ sick,” Dameron said. He sounded vaguely exasperated, though whether at Hux or himself, Hux wasn’t entirely sure. Dameron sighed. “Look man, I’m not gonna keep you out here so you get pneumonia or something. I’ve got a proposal for you. And don’t go getting ideas, sweet-cheeks,” he added, because of course he just couldn’t help himself. Hux did roll his eyes at that.

“We’ve found the _Finalizer_.” The words made Hux freeze. Of all the things he could have imagined Dameron had come here to pester him about, this was certainly not one of them.

“We found its wreck, I mean.” Hux’x face was slightly averted, and he closed his eyes. His entire crew. For some reason, he hadn’t even begun to consider the enormity of the loss, too consumed by his own single-minded pursuit of survival. But all of them – Mitaka, Peavey, Thannison, every soldier he had ever hand-picked to serve under him, supervised, trained, worked alongside – an almost overwhelming calculus of loss that Hux was briefly stunned by. He swallowed; his throat hurt, and it wasn’t just from his cold.

Dameron was going on, seemingly oblivious to any struggle Hux might be facing. “And the thing is, you could be near enough the only person left alive who knows the command codes to that ship. We need them, and I’ve come here to ask you to help us get them.”

“Oh, and it’s that simple, is it?” For the first time, Hux looked him properly in the face, and he realised with a smart of dismay that Dameron really _did_ think it was that simple. The other man’s expression was open, intense, his dark brows cinching together in a faint little moue of earnestness. “I just hand over the codes to you and you trip off on your merry way to pilfer the corpse of the finest star destroyer the First Order ever built?”

“Yeah, I realise it’s not quite that straightforward, Hugs. But I’ve read through enough First Order profiles. I know you designed pretty much all the advanced programming on that thing. That tech that let you chase our asses halfway across the galaxy even when we were making multiple FTL jumps every minute? I know you built that, Hugs. Hell, I’d be impressed if you hadn’t killed half our fleet in the process. But that’s not what we’re after.” Dameron took a step closer to him and Hux stiffened, trying not to recoil. “We want the _Finalizer_ ’s IFF. And you’re going to help us get it.”

“I am not going to _help_ you do anything of the sort.”

“You don’t exactly have a bargaining chip here, Hugs.”

Hux was quiet for a moment, the cold, luminous files of his mind swishing and clicking into place as he ran several contingency plans past himself. Bold of Dameron to assume that he didn’t.

“If you expect me to give you any form of assistance in this little piratical endeavour of yours, I expect something in return. That is the most basic etiquette of _quid pro quo_. Not that I would expect someone of your ilk to understand that,” Hux couldn’t resist adding, giving his head a dismissive little toss.

Dameron nodded, his expression speculative. “Okay, I’m listening. What can I help you with, general?”

Hux chose to ignore that. “I want a craft with enough fuel in it for an FTL jump.”

“Haha yeah. Dream on.”

“ _All right_.” Hux ground his teeth together, a muscle in his jaw flickering. “I want my – _guard_ to be relaxed – ” to _dignify_ those inept laserbrains with the term – “I want regular updates on extra-planetary news feeds. And – ” he hesitated, just briefly, aware that what he was about to ask for required a level of audacity that was bold even for him – “I want access to Resistance engineering blueprints.”

Dameron shook his head emphatically. “No way. Not happening.”

“Fine. _Approved_ copies, then.”

Dameron seemed to mull this over, if Hux believed him remotely capable of rational thought. After a few moments, Dameron set his mouth and said, “Okay, the guard thing can be negotiated. I think we can probably get hold of some news holos for you. They’ll be a few weeks out of date but that’s the best you can expect right now. As for the other stuff – that’s gonna have to go through General Organa. I don’t have the clout to authorise anything like that.”

“Oh, and here I was thinking you were the fearless leader of this band of vagabonds.” Hux paused, thinking furiously. “Will the Jedi be coming with us?”

“Rey?” Dameron seemed surprised to hear her called that. “Yeah, she’s coming. Why?”

Hux sniffed haughtily, turning away to look downhill to where the Resistance camp was beginning to light torches against the rapidly approaching darkness. The second sun had nearly drowned itself fully in the gleaming horizon. “I just hope you all know what you’re doing,” he said.

Behind him, Dameron gave a breathless sort of laugh. “You and me both, princess. You and me both.”


	3. The Tiltyard

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> once again, thank you for the absolutely lovely feedback, guys. it genuinely means the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter deliberately references THIS Poe impulse control meme, because...i mean? 
> 
> https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/359936195213466376/

The planet was called _Jint_ in its old tongue, something more colourful and with considerably more vowel sounds in some of the other local dialects. Rey had learnt that the town (when the tattered little settlement had actually _had_ a town, sometime before trade routes had been redirected during the war with the Empire and had strangled the lifeblood out of it) had boasted a small reputation for the diminutive brigade of warehouses where telescopes were manufactured in shiny black tins. They were too far from the next nearest star cluster to see how it curved if they turned their lenses on their own sky.

But Jint had its own flavour of galactic pyrotechnics. In the prismatic moment between the sun extinguishing itself in the watery skyline and before the moon rose – that’s when the lights came. Shimmering, restive, impossibly alive curtains of incandescence that hung across the sky, their colour never static for longer than seconds: blues and greens and silvers and sometimes deep reds that shifted and changed with such cold, distant clarity that Rey thought she could almost hear them whisper. Leia had explained that they weren’t really a true aurora; more, they were caused by some interaction between the planet’s natural bioluminescence and its atmosphere that reacted almost like solar flares. At night, Rey would sometimes turn down the jerry lamp in her room and sit in the dark, just gazing out at it, feeling as though she were watching the universe spill through the sky. She had been away from Jakku for less than two years – she was still sometimes overwhelmed by how much she had never seen.

Tonight, however, there was little chance of watching the lights. A blizzard had set in just as the plates were being cleared from the evening meal; it had been building for most of the day, the wind gradually growing stronger, deeper in intensity and bringing with it snow clouds that hung on the horizon like an ominous wave bank at sea. But soon visibility had been reduced to less than your own hand in front of your face and great swathes of snow were building up against the sides of the farmhouse, the squadron of tents erected in the valley dip were collapsing, forcing people to seek shelter in the ancient barn where the majority of the Resistance’s tech was being stored, and the tangled mass of generators was running on overtime, throwing off heat as they attempted to keep the lights on and the cold out as the storm raged outside.

Rey had gone out with Poe, Chewie and Finn to round up any people who were still straggling to shelter and to try and secure any ground vehicles or craft that might be damaged by the wind, while Rose set to de-lagging the thermal regulator on the generator bank to keep it from overheating. When they finally kicked their way back through the blizzard drifts to the barn, Chewbacca’s fur was matted with snow and he was roaring balefully.

“Chewie, I don’t _have_ any snow-shoes your size,” Finn said, trying to unwind his scarf without unslinging his blaster first and getting hopelessly caught between the two. “Believe me, if I did you’d be the first guy I’d give them to” – Chewie gave a cynical grumble – “Oh come on, that isn’t fair – ”

“General.” Both Poe and Finn turned at Lieutenant Connix’s voice, Finn half-guiltily, as though he still couldn’t quite credit himself with the title, Poe with the same expectant, slightly goofy smile he always wore whenever anyone called him _General Dameron_. Connix paused, made unsure by the confusion, before she addressed herself to Poe.

“The commlinks are down, sir. We can’t reach any of our scouts.”

“A bit of silent running might not be a bad thing for a while,” Poe said. “There’s enough comm chatter on the network as it is. Our guys know to hold position until they hear otherwise.”

Connix looked unconvinced. “We’ll keep working on the arrays overnight, see if we can get them online again.”

“Keep me updated,” Poe called to her retreating back, his voice a little limp. He sighed. “She’s better at this organising stuff than I am,” he said to Rey as they made their way past the rows of temporary bunks towards the back of the barn where the generators were rumbling, picking their way around people in various stages of attempting to bed down for the night: some already curled up and sleeping, some soothing restless children, others speaking together in soft, mindful voices, their faces dimly lit by the garlands of lanterns hastily slung about the cavernous interior of the barn.

“She’s probably just worried you’re going to rope her into another mutiny.” Rey saw Poe’s expression slip across several different emotional planes before settling on something approximating the sheepish, by way of a disarming sidelong grin.

“No promises, kiddo. I’m _joking_ , obviously,” he added hastily, with a sudden flash of alarm that made Rey grin too. His matching smile, when it returned, was slow, conspiratorial, and for a moment Rey felt that old tug of homesickness for something she could not name: a place or a time that perhaps had never existed, perhaps had only taken shape during the war in the way that people are flung together in a cataclysm of extraordinary necessity and find their greatest meaning in the tiny, glimmering moments between fighting to stay alive. She couldn’t remember the last time she had felt normal. She didn’t know what that felt like.

Finn had boiled water on the little gas stove and was steeping leaves in it for tea. Rose had unwrapped a heavy slab of a dark, treacly cake that Rey found herself licking off her fingers for a good few minutes after eating her first piece. Chewie had taken himself off to do something to the sights on his bowcaster, so the rest of them – Rey, Poe, Finn and Rose – sat in easy half-silence for a while, occasionally making comment on the sounds of the storm outside or remarking on the almost uncontrollable stickiness of the cake, while BB-8 trundled companionably between them, frequently pausing next to Poe so he could rest his hand on their dome. At some point somebody produced a bottle of Corellian brandy, although Rey never really saw who, and small, dark nips of it were doled out in the tin cups they had used for the tea. She felt it loosen something in her, just a little, an affect that seemed to be felt by the rest of the group as well; they were all soon laughing together a little breathlessly, a little painfully.

“No,” Rose was saying emphatically, still half-giggling. “It’s definitely the Grimtaash that can stun a piece for two turns. The Kintan Strider is the one that can regenerate HP. Not that I’d expect you two to know,” she added to Finn and Poe with a good-natured little head toss.

“What, because every time I’ve ever played Dejarik Chewie threatens to rip my arm off?” Finn said. “He’s not exactly the best teacher. _And_ he cheats,” he added, catching Rey’s eye. For a moment they smiled at each other like a secret, and Rey felt a lightening in her chest again that was not just the brandy at the thought that maybe, just maybe, things could be normal again between them. But then Finn looked away, his gaze darkening as he seemed to gaze, briefly, into his own thoughts.

“Don’t look at me,” Poe said. “Last time I played it I ended up stuck on Canto Bight with two receipts to an off-planet ski resort and no clothes.”

“I kind of want to ask,” said Finn, “but I’m also too scared to.”

BB-8 trilled an animated series of beeps. Poe shook his head. “Before your time, pal. And stop trying to drop me in it.”

They were all quiet again for a while after that. Rey could hear a loose piece of corrugated iron on the barn roof flapping in the wind. Poe used his pocketknife to cut himself another piece of the treacle cake, began to eat a small corner of it, seemed to think better of it.

“So, uh, elephant in the room and all that,” he said, still poking at the cake. “Obviously we’re not going anywhere anytime soon in this kind of visibility, but just wanted to make sure that everyone’s still on board with the plan. You know, what everyone’s gonna be doing and stuff.”

“Pretty standard cut and run, right?” said Finn. “I mean, a wreck that size is going to be attracting its fair share of interest so we’ll have to watch out for raiders, but apart from that I say we just get in, grab the tech, get gone.”

“There’s a chance its stealth protocols might still be running,” Rose added, leaning forward so she could rest her elbows on her knees, her eyes luminous in the light from the stove. “I mean, a ship like that is going to have defence systems in place for exactly this kind of eventuality. Like, it’s a worst-case scenario failsafe, see – if the _Finalizer_ became unusable to them, the First Order would have wanted to make sure it hunkered down until they could get it to the breakers yard and repurpose it.”

“Didn’t it ping on the _Falcon_ ’s sensors though?” Rey asked, looking across to Poe and Finn. Poe shook his head. “No – well – not really. We registered something with the profile of a Resurgent-class Star Destroyer, so we ran a check and that’s how we tagged it. I mean, it’s kinda tricky to hide something that size, but Rose is right. Unless all its systems are dormant it’ll probably still have some kind of cloaking device active that means any passing ships won’t notice it unless they’re looking for it. And it won’t be long before people _are_ looking for it.”

“Hope this weather clears up soon then,” said Finn darkly. He paused for a moment, his gaze deliberately averted downward. “Don’t suppose you managed to get the command codes out of him yet?”

There was no need to ask who Finn meant by _him_. Hux’s presence hung like a malignant spectre across this entire endeavour, and Rey was just surprised that it was Finn who had brought him up. Finn had been perhaps the least in favour of the Resistance offering Hux amnesty, if not the most vocally against it. Rey didn’t blame him in the slightest. Of the four of them, Hux had taken the most from Finn: his home, his childhood, his _identity_. It was a testament to Finn that he hadn’t put a blaster bolt between the man’s eyes the moment he saw him.

Poe stopped stabbing at the piece of treacle cake and began wrapping it up in its sliver of wax paper again. “It’s not really that simple, buddy,” he said, after a small hesitation. “If he could just cough up the codes and let us be on our way, I’d be more than happy to squeeze him for them. But the _Finalizer_ ’s an unknown quantity. I don’t know if it would work if one of us just plugged the codes in and pressed play. The safest thing is to manually override it from a distance, and – well, Hugs – Hux practically built that ship himself. He knows it inside out. If there are any nasty surprises in store, he’ll be able to give us a heads up.”

“Oh, come _on_ , Poe.” The sharpening in Finn’s voice made Rey glance at him. He was looking at Poe with a kind of naked disbelief on his face, his lovely eyes fraught. “You seriously think he could care less if one of us got tangled up in some sort of First Order booby trap? I served under him, man. I know what he’s like. He’s a sadist.”

“Finn, I know it’s not exactly ideal…” Poe began, his voice gentle.

“He is _evil_ , Poe. You’re an idiot if you think otherwise.”

“Finn, look,” Rey broke in. His gaze was on her like a slap, his expression just as painful. She took a breath, verged on. “Hux has everything to lose and nothing to gain by betraying us. We’re not going to let him out of our sight, and if he puts so much as a toe out of line Leia’s given us the go ahead to shoot him. For real, this time,” she added with a little smile, trying for humour. Finn stared back at her, his expression stony.

“You guys seem to think he’s just some kind of joke,” he said. “You and your dumb pet name for him – ” looking at Poe, who began to say “Man, it’s not a _pet name_ ” – “You and the general acting like he’s some kind of project you can throw resources at – ” turning to Rey; he was breathing hard. “It’s like you’ve forgotten he killed billions of people. Yeah? Billions. Like turning on a light switch. Do you get that?”

“I kind of have to agree with Finn here,” Rose said softly, as Poe opened his mouth to speak again. Rey held out her hand, trying to ask them to _just wait_ , _just let her handle this_ , but it was impossible to miss the way both Finn and Poe stiffened slightly at the gesture, Poe instantly trying to play it off as needing to stretch, while a muscle worked in Finn’s jaw as he stared at her.

“S’pose worst comes to the worst you can always use one of your mind tricks on him,” he said, his voice hard.

Rey felt that familiar swell of nausea, the same she had experienced the first time Finn looked at her as though he didn’t recognise her after they all thought she had killed Chewie. She clenched and unclenched her hands in her lap, glad she was wearing gloves to hide the tremor that ran through them. “That’s not fair.”

Finn shrugged, his expression hunted, stark, as though he couldn’t quite believe what he was saying. “I guess it’s what Kylo Ren would have done.”

Rey tightened her fists again, once, hard, feeling the Force snap inside her like a too-taut bowstring, and the little gas stove gave a sudden, sizzling twang as its energy cell popped, upturning the kettle and spilling the remains of the tea over the tarpaulin. BB-8 gave a startled alert, rolling backwards out of the way. For several seconds, nobody moved.

“Finn, buddy.” Poe’s voice was low, strained, not quite meeting anyone’s eyes as he spoke. “I know you’re upset, but you’ve got to apologise.”

“No, he doesn’t – ” Rey began, at the same time as Finn said, “Yeah you’re right, you’re right. I’m sorry. That was out of order.”

But the cold fact of the matter was – it _wasn_ ’t, at all. An hour or so later, as Rey lay on her back in the narrow cot, listening to the mingling sounds of the dying storm outside and the tinny, muffled noises of hundreds of people trying to sleep, she knew with absolute clarity that Finn was right. Her power was dangerous, and it had been all along. She wasn’t just any Jedi, dreadful enough with her strength in the Force that more than one person had referred to as unnatural. The blood of the Sith ran in her veins, and the Dark had called to her like a scratch against her brain. It wasn’t just impracticality or a lack of necessity that meant she hadn’t held her lightsabre since the battle on Exegol. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to. For not the first time, it struck her that neither she nor Leia had spoken about Ben yet, and she wasn’t certain that either of them would ever be able to: knitted both too close and too far asunder by the pain caused by a man who had made it his life’s work to destroy everything around him that had ever seemed good. And what Rey could never quite admit to herself, not even privately, not even now in the bitter watches of the night, was that when she had looked into Kylo Ren’s eyes, she had felt – not passion, not romantic love, but _twinship_.

She rolled over onto her side. Rose was lying a foot or so away from her, her back turned towards Rey, her heavy dark hair spilling across her shoulder. For a moment Rey stretched out her hand as though she meant to touch Rose’s hair, not entirely sure why. But then Rose made a soft, warm sound in her sleep, and Rey withdrew her hand, tucking it back beneath her cheek.

She was aware of Poe getting up and pulling on his boots in the half-darkness.

~

Poe’s thoughts churned against his skull as he made his way uphill, BB-8 rolling a few feet in front of him to light the route. The new snowfall gleamed white and silver in the glow from their retractable torch and Poe made sure to walk in the smooth, rounded path created in BB’s wake.

There hadn’t been many occasions in Poe’s life when he had been forced to make anything resembling a ruthless choice, one moulded in efficiency and logic rather than rooted deeply in a gut-leaping rush of instinct that sirened at him that _yes, this_ was the right thing to do. If anyone had ever asked Poe to describe himself (not that anyone he knew of was in the practise of doing so), he would have admitted happily he was an _act first, consequences later kind of guy_. It had always served him well; you couldn’t really afford to have second thoughts or self-doubts when you were behind the controls of an X-Wing, every movement a tightly calculated risk that only worked primarily because very few of them ever were calculated. But while this course of action might have served Poe well in the midst of your average dogfight, the other less fortunate upshot was that it tended to land him in the midst of situations like the one onboard the _Raddus_ with Admiral Holdo. In Poe’s defence –thinking this to himself breathlessly as he crested the last swell of the hill and neared the little tin-roofed out building standing near the treeline – he had never claimed he had good impulse control. And Leia was about 85% of it.

There was a little anteroom to the ramshackle prison that the guards used to shelter from the weather, and Poe could see two lamps burning in the window as he approached the door. He held it open so BB-8 could roll through, and judging by the sudden fluster of activity as the two soldiers on duty leapt to their feet either one or both of them had been dozing in the warmth from the little jury-rigged stove. There was an open pack of playing cards on the table, as well as the remnants of the guards’ evening meal on battered tin plates and a wrinkled paperback that looked as though it had been dropped in the bath several times. Clearly guarding the most loathed general of the First Order was tedious work.

Poe waved off their clumsy salutes as he scraped snow off his boots against the threshold. BB-8 chirruped happily and gave one thorough, dog-like shake, scattering snow in a neat circle around them.

“Evening, kids,” Poe said, pushing his damp hair back off his brow as he turned to face them. “Sorry for the late-night visit. Don’t suppose our prisoner’s awake?”

“I think he’s gone to bed, sir,” one soldier said; she began to move towards the only other door in the room, its passcode lock glowing red. “I’ll get him up.”

“It’s okay,” Poe said quickly. He couldn’t imagine Hux would be exactly pleased at being woken up, and he would rather he face the consequences of that than these teenagers. “I’ll do the honours.” He waggled his fingers at them in a vague approximation of a serious salute. The relief in the kids’ faces was almost comedic.

Beyond the locked door, there was a short corridor leading to another door with a manual chain-link on it. Poe whistled to himself a little ruefully as he jiggled the recalcitrant key in the lock. He could hear muffled movements coming from inside the room. Well, they did say Hux never slept.

“Hugs?” he called as the key finally caught and turned. Best to give Hux time to cover his modesty at least. Poe grinned at the idea of the general sleeping naked. _As if_. Now _there_ was a man who only ever went to bed with the top button of his regulation pyjamas firmly fastened.

Poe had only been inside Hux’s cell a handful of times, and it never failed to surprise him how tidy it was. Not that Hux had much else to do with himself, he supposed, briefly amusing himself with the mental image of Hux tackling the nooks and crannies of the _Finalizer_ with the same amount of fervour he evidently put into keeping his cell clean. The guy probably had his own marigolds. Black, naturally.

There admittedly wasn’t much to keep tidy, but nevertheless the room was immaculate to the point of sterile. There was a small desk bolted to the floor where Hux could work on any engineering problems the Resistance set him to – Poe had a vague idea that the current one was something to do with a communications descrambler. Leia had never been one to waste a resource, and Hux’s genius in such matters was proving to be invaluable. Any project he signed off was always meticulously checked to ensure he hadn’t encoded some kind of insidious mousetrap into the device, but so far he had been good as his word. The narrow bed against the wall was a standard issue cot with thin blankets, probably too thin for the climate but it wasn’t like this was a hotel. The rest of the room was taken up with a toilet and shower – no privacy screen of course – and a small juddering thermal regulator unit that kept the lights at a constant low-level and took the edge off the chill.

Hux was standing in the middle of the room as though he had been waiting for him. Poe suspected that he hadn’t actually been to bed yet, though he was wearing the soft grey tunic he had been issued as sleepwear with his old First Order greatcoat slung over his shoulders. The coat seemed to swamp him, making him look both more angular and brittle-edged, and smaller, thinner, vulnerable. In the soft light Poe could see that Hux’s usual pallor was now almost translucent, even more so than when he had spoken to him earlier on the hillside – exhausted, violet bruises shone beneath his eyes, and the fluted edges of his nostrils were rouged a delicate red.

“What in _Sith hell_ can you possibly want now, Dameron?” Well, Hux may have looked awful, but he sounded worse, his voice deepened and raspy with congestion. Poe carefully shut the door behind him, leaving BB-8 outside ready to send for help if such a thing proved necessary. In the same moment Poe realised that he hadn’t re-holstered his blaster. _Oh_.

Well, what was Hux going to do to him anyway – bite him?

“Yeah, sorry to intrude, Hugs. It’s not a booty call, I promise.” Poe rummaged in his jacket, feeling for the object he had packaged up and pocketed earlier. His hand closed on the small bundle of wax paper and he withdrew it triumphantly. “Knew you weren’t feeling well, thought I’d bring you something to cheer you up a bit. You like treacle cake?”

Hux looked at him as though Poe had burst into a rendition of the Republic’s national anthem. “If you’ve just come here to taunt me – ”

“I haven’t come here to _taunt_ you – _man_. You are a very suspicious person, Hugs. Just figured I’d butter you up a little before we risk life and limb together, is all.”

When Hux still didn’t move to take the parcel, Poe shrugged and placed it on the desk. He could feel Hux’s eyes following his every movement. Poe couldn’t quite articulate to himself how this made him feel – like his worth was being mentally stripped and measured and calculated perhaps, weighed on the cold scales of Hux’s mind and found wanting but serviceable if he were to be taken apart in some way and re-utilised. Poe liked looking at him; he was perfectly comfortable admitting this to himself even though he knew it probably wouldn’t be the smartest decision he ever made to disclose this fact to anyone else. Hux’s beauty was as glacial as his stare – those fine-made lines of his face, his supple mouth, the deep red of his hair and his paper-soft skin, luminous as starlight. _Skinny guy. Kinda pasty_.

“If you’ve quite finished,” Hux said thinly. “As you can see, I am not exactly busy but I’m sure even the Resistance” (Poe could virtually hear him mentally adding the ‘loathsome’ prefix) “has an amendment that prohibits sleep deprivation as a form of torture.”

Poe made an innocent little _who, me?_ gesture. “Hey, at least it’s not my winning smile you consider torture.”

“Well.” Hux’s mouth twisted into what was nearly amusement, was probably more like a sneer. “I thought _that_ went without saying.”

Poe laughed. Who’d have thought it – Armitage Hux could be _funny_. He felt himself almost relaxing into the familiarity of the banter, before he remembered who he was talking to.

“So yeah, uh.” He scuffed the edge of his boot against the floor. Hux’s eyes followed the movement, his expression growing sourer by increments. “Just wanted to keep you in the loop about the _Finalizer_ thing. We’ve got an engineer who can handle things on the ground, so to speak. You know – Tico?” He glanced at Hux, who merely looked back at him impassively. Poe ploughed on before he could think too much. “We’re not gonna leave until visibility clears, and anyway you’re sick. When we get there me, Rey and Finn will handle the vanguard, so you can stay on the _Falcon_.”

“I am not dying, Dameron, I’m perfectly capable of handling myself.”

“Yeah, I know,” Poe said meaningfully, thinking back to how Hux had shot three stormtroopers in _less_ than three seconds. “I just want to streamline this mission as much as possible, and it makes sense that we keep you in more of a – support role.” Shit, he wasn’t good at this technical battlefield jargon stuff. He was good at shooting things, and sometimes following orders.

He saw Hux’s flexible mouth tighten, a spasm of fury breaking through the tightly controlled exterior that Poe could almost see him clutching onto with every fibre of his being. “Listen you _cretinous_ – ” Hux hissed, then stopped, seeming to check himself, his breast rising and falling rapidly. There was a high, hectic colour in his cheeks that made his green eyes gleam almost ice-blue in the dappling light.

“You have already said yourself,” he went on, his voice emerging jerky and slightly high-pitched in a way that Poe was very familiar with, whenever someone managed to tease a ruffling hand just right between Hux’s carefully stiffened feathers. “No one knows that ship better than I do. Living _or_ dead.” He almost snarled the words. “You stand a far better chance of actually achieving the ends of your mission if you bring me with you instead of leaving me behind to babysit your Wookiee.”

“Why do you want on that ship so badly, huh Hugs?” Poe said. He took a deliberately casual step closer to him and was gratified when Hux visibly stiffened. “What’s still on there that you want? Something you can use against us? Is that why you asked for engineering blueprints?”

This close to him, Poe realised he had never before noticed how subtly Hux’s face could run through a delicate prism of almost infinitesimally mobile micro-expressions: his mouth tightening and the tic of a muscle high in his jaw indicating barely repressed anger, his nostrils flaring in indignation; his brows cinching together in a characteristic of anxiety; a small flexing at the edges of his eyes and his pupils blown wide suggesting something else that Poe couldn’t quite discern, something younger, barer, vulnerable. Poe swallowed and blinked, feeling as though he had glimpsed something intimate that he had no right to see.

“I want to know precisely what happened to my crew,” Hux said at last, his voice low. “I want to _see_ it with my own eyes. Whatever you wish to make of that is entirely up to you.”

Poe felt a familiar twist of pain inside him, one he couldn’t quite place. He cleared his throat, nodded. “Okay. Okay. I can make that happen. _Quid pro quo_ , right? Here. Shake on it?”

Hux looked down at Poe’s hand, extended between the two of them. When he looked up again, he actually _was_ smiling this time, a little unpleasantly, more macabre than friendly, but it was there nonetheless.

“Do try not to embarrass yourself, Dameron.”


	4. Trick of the Light

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mild trigger warning for attempted sexual assault and some minor violence in this chapter. it's not graphic and is over relatively quickly but if you want to skip, it takes place in the present tense hux pov at the start of the chapter. read safe, everyone :)

**35 ABY, on board the _Steadfast_**

The singed hole in the front of his tunic from the blaster shot is still smoking. This is possibly the second thing Hux becomes aware of as he swims up through a receding, red-tinged tide of pain back to consciousness. The first is that someone is crouched over him and is going through his pockets.

Hux feels his mind swiftly recalibrate even as a faint still threatens to overwhelm him again, shutting down all unnecessary auxiliary systems such as compassion or concern for others and focusing onto the bitterest knifepoint of one cold, howling drive: survival. All primal instincts alerting in panic at him from his back brain to _stiffen_ , _fight back, run now – use your teeth your nails anything just get away_ – are coolly discharged and boxed off; he keeps his body limp and pliable beneath the invading grasp of the stormtrooper as plastoid-covered hands grope and tug at his uniform – _what are they looking for_?

He is aware there is at least one other trooper in the room, though the soft murmur of their conversation is proving difficult for him to discern through a buzz of hard-edged static in his head and the high whine of tinnitus in his left ear from where he hit the back of his head on the starship floor. The chances are that he is slightly concussed. As the stormtrooper continues to rummage, Hux runs through a mental checklist. He is Armitage Hux. He is on the _Steadfast_. It is the year 35 ABY. And Kylo Ren is going to die for this.

“He’s got a knife on him,” he hears, and the trooper’s voice is so close to his ear suddenly that he has to marshal every vestige of his self-control to keep from flinching.

“…toss it…” The other trooper’s voice is still reaching him through fog, but Hux feels hands gripping his sleeve, attempting to roll it up. _Idiots_. Do they think he keeps it stashed in his cuff?

“…get this off – ” The stormtrooper bent over him turns, dropping Hux’s arm, and Hux hears the quality of his voice change and a shift in the air pressure above him as the trooper stands. “—me a hand?” Stars, if his head would just stop _ringing_.

He thinks: if he can move quickly enough, he can slip the blade from the false panel of fabric in his sleeve but he needs to disable one trooper straight away so he can tackle the other, and that wouldn’t have been easy even if he hadn’t just been shot twice in the space of an hour. He is becoming increasingly aware of a stabbing ache centred beneath the considerable dent in his body armour where Pryde’s blaster shot hit him. A broken rib, probably more than one, and judging by the gritty little drag of pain when he takes the most miniscule of experimental breaths – a punctured lung too. He is just considering whether he can rely on his limbs having any coordination in them when there are hands suddenly at his throat.

At his collar, to be more precise. But this time Hux doesn’t need to will himself into remaining still – for a moment something beyond panic blooms inside him, a gripping terror so opaque that he feels his own body briefly shutting down. Anything resembling fight or flight has been utterly paralysed by a gut sense that is more primal and hard-learned in the depths of his childhood – the instinct of an injured animal to play dead so as to avoid any further harm coming to it. Hux has done this a thousand times before. He can do it again until they stop.

He hears the soft _snick_ as the catches of his collar are undone, the _whissp_ of the fabric as the two stiff wings are parted – feels cool air on his neck. He is sure they will be able to _see_ the pinprick racing of his pulse, pattering like a rabbit’s at the pale hollow of his throat. The same catches run down the front of his uniform tunic and he can feel the stormtrooper tugging at them in frustration – small wonder, the catches are finicky, miniscule things that sometimes even Hux’s delicate, long-fingered, practised hands have fumbled with in the past. Trying to undo them with trooper gloves on would be nigh on impossible.

“…cut it off– ” he hears, and behind his closed eyelids there is _red black red_ pulsing at the edges of his vision and his heartbeat is thundering so fast that surely they can’t still think he’s dead, and he wants this to stop, he needs this to stop, _to get away now stop touching me_ –

There is a brief, muffled interaction between the two troopers, before Hux hears the swish of a door opening and closing, and he’s aware that he is now alone with just one of them. There is a soft, cool click, the rush of air pressure being released – the trooper has taken his helmet off.

 _These stormtroopers are not loyal to him_. The knowledge slips through him anew like the chill of some distant sickness. These are not the same soldiers programmed from birth who he could have deactivated with a simple phrase: could have prompted to put their blasters to their own heads and done away with themselves without them so much as hesitating, had he wished it. These men are some unnatural relic of the Empire, loyal to Pryde, to Palpatine, and they can do whatever they want to him.

When the trooper speaks again, his voice undistorted by the vocoder in his helmet is pitched low, almost conciliatory. He sounds youngish, his accent hard to place.

“Can’t say this hasn’t been a long time coming, general. Lots of people wanting to put you in your place.” He laughs, a little breathlessly. He sounds scared, _excited_. “Put you right in your place.”

Hux is lying with his pelvis slightly rotated to the left, one leg flush to the floor in a right angle, the other bent at the knee and more extended. He feels the stormtrooper’s hand on the inside of this leg, against his calf, sliding upwards to where the top of his boot stops just below his knee. The trooper’s hand stills here for a moment. Hux is suddenly aware, with almost appalling clarity, that he knows Hux isn’t dead.

“Just put you in your place a little.” The trooper’s voice is rough, absent-minded, and now his hand is moving again, his grasp heavy, sickening, as it slides up the inside of Hux’s thigh.

For a moment, it is as though Hux can see himself stripped from his own body, simultaneously both miles, miles, miles away from himself, hanging and twisting and airless in the frozen maw of space, and hideously, inescapably immediate, the taste of his own blood in his mouth and the smell of the trooper in his nostrils, sweat laced with fear and greed and intent, and that hand between his legs like a voice in his head demanding a reply to a question he can never, never answer. Beneath him, Hux thinks he can feel the floor of the _Steadfast_ yielding away from him with the subtle tug of vertigo.

In one sharp movement he twists so that his hips are now aligned with the stormtrooper’s body, at the same time rocking sharply backwards so that his weight is briefly displaced onto his shoulder-blades; the trooper is leaning over him and in the split second before Hux pinions his legs around the trooper’s neck, he sees the man’s eyes: deep blue, wide with astonishment, stupidly young in the puppyish face.

Hux grabs onto thick hanks of blond hair, leveraging himself so he can twist as well as squeeze, his thighs now gripping the trooper’s neck tight enough to crush his windpipe. The trooper gives a startled, wheezing cry, his hands flying up as he tries to punch, slap, cuff Hux away from him, the edge of his fist catching Hux on the jaw, but now Hux has managed to lock his ankles properly behind the trooper’s head and is squeezing, squeezing. The trooper gives a guttural moan; he’s trying to _stand, stars damn the fool,_ but his weight combined with Hux’s and the angle in which he had already been kneeling makes him topple over sideways. His hands are frantically scraping at where Hux’s thighs are gripping him, blindly seeking a point of contact that he can wedge his fingers into and pull. His struggles are less violent now, more desperate, animalistic, his handsome face purpled and ugly as the breath is crushed out of his lungs. Hux is distantly aware of his own panting, sobbing breath in his ears; he has managed to wrap one arm fully around the trooper’s head, his other hand still gripping yellow, sweat-damp hair, and all it takes now is for him to give his hips one final, sharp twist as he jerks the trooper’s head in the opposite direction, and the man’s neck breaks clean.

Hux is shaking almost too badly to push the body off him, but he is so high on the adrenaline saturating his bloodstream that black spots are beating at the edges of his vision and the pain from the two blaster shots is almost non-existent. He barely even notices he is crying, tears sliding down his cheeks as he shoves the dead weight to one side and crawls away, his teeth bared in a mad rictus of fury and terror. His hand immediately goes to the little concealed panel in his sleeve and he slips two fingers inside, pulling out the monomolecular blade. The knife is – well, it can’t really be called a knife in all earnestness: a slender, translucent wisp of an instrument, its single molecule stretched into a gossamer-fine cobweb of lethality that will break the moment it kills.

The dead stormtrooper is slumped in a sort of foetal position, his face turned towards Hux. There is a thin line of bloodied spittle running from his mouth. Hux swallows a surge of nausea, wanting to whine, to whimper – _weak Armitage, pathetic_.

When the second stormtrooper returns, Hux is waiting for him. Hux gives him just enough time to notice the body, to mutter “ _Shit_ ” as he freezes uncertainly, the door swishing shut again behind him, before Hux severs the Achilles tendon on his left ankle with one swipe of his blade.

The trooper gives single startled shout as his leg collapses beneath him, and as he goes down the edge of his helmet clangs against the wall. Hux is on him in a moment, but the trooper’s head lolls limply as he grasps the front panels of his armour and Hux realises he’s out cold. It takes him several goes before he can get his trembling hands to cooperate, but he finally manages to disengage the lock on the trooper’s helmet and pull it off.

This one is older, with a buzzcut and a faint scar on his upper lip. Hux drags him into a sitting position, propping him against the wall before he unhooks the trooper’s blaster from the holster at his hip and removes the safety lock. The pistol’s energy cell hums as it begins to power up. The stormtrooper is starting to come to. Hux presses the muzzle of the blaster just beneath the edge of the trooper’s exposed jaw. With his free hand, he slaps him across the face, once, hard.

“ _Where’s Ren_?” he says, his voice emerging in a raw scrape of broken static. He slaps the trooper again, harder. “ _Where’s Ren_?”

“Please stop hitting me,” the trooper mumbles. Hux shoves the blaster muzzle harder into the soft flesh of his neck and the trooper cringes against the wall, panic welling in his eyes as his consciousness re-solidifies.

“ _Where’s – Ren_?” Hux’s voice cracks and breaks as he almost howls the words at him. The palm of his hand clatters across the trooper’s face again. The trooper jerks, closing his eyes as though he can somehow hide from the onslaught that way.

“I – I don’t know, sir, I don’t know,” he stutters out frantically.

“ _I don’t believe you_ ,” Hux snarls. He leans his weight into the blaster and the stormtrooper coughs as the pressure from the muzzle point chokes him.

“He took one of the modified interceptors,” he croaks. “The _whisper_. I think he was going to Kef Bir to look for the scavenger – ”

His body jerks once as Hux puts a bolt through his head, blood and brain matter already sizzling as it slides from his nostrils. Hux throws the blaster to one side and crawls nearer to the door, trying to put distance between himself and the two bodies. He can still feel the spray of blood against his face as he pulled the trigger. For a moment, he stays like that, his back against the wall, his knees drawn up to his chest, fingernails scraping uselessly against his gloved palms. He performs a quick inventory of the situation at hand.

He is Armitage Hux. He is on the _Steadfast_. It is the year 35 ABY. And Kylo Ren is going to die for this.

~

Hux opened his eyes.

The _Millennium Falcon_ was a hardy, ramshackle, incorrigibly handmade, clattering great hulk of a star-faring vessel, seemingly broken down and rebuilt piecemeal over the years as it passed hands between various Rebel miscreants, all held together by a rubber band and some swaggering rogue pilot’s chewing gum glued to a generous helping of dumb luck – what Resistance propaganda holovids always liked to winsomely refer to as _hope_. Hux had only ever seen it a handful of times prior to his – recent familiarity with the Resistance, certainly never up close, and he was always a combination of appalled and grudgingly intrigued as to how the thing ever actually got off the ground.

And he had _certainly_ never noticed how ugly it was before.

Dameron came jogging back down the boarding ramp like he thought he was in exactly one of those sentimental Rebel war films. Hux half-expected a strategically timed gust of wind to tousle his dark hair.

“Hey Hugs, daylight’s wasting. You want the grand tour or what?”

Hux cast a brief, derisory glance at his ever-present armed escort. “I assumed I would be gunned down if I attempted to board the Resistance’s glorious flagship without _permission_.”

Dameron grinned, made a gentle dismissing gesture at the soldiers. Reluctantly, they lowered their blasters and moved away. Dameron looked back at Hux.

“Can’t have you made to feel unwelcome on your first day doing Rebel scum stuff,” he said. He cut a raffish little bow towards the _Falcon_ , still grinning. “After you, your majesty.”

~

It was _extremely_ cramped on-board.

Dameron had made altogether far too much out of showing Hux around the crew quarters, as though he imagined Hux to be fascinated with the minutiae of how caf was brewed on rickety ex-intermodal tugs, or the fact that the galley had been installed as some kind of wedding gift to Leia Organa (well, at least that was _practical_ , Hux allowed) – usually while pausing with his hands on his hips and saying things like, “So yeah, this is where the magic happens. You get a lot of bang for your cred on this bird.” It occurred to Hux very quickly that Dameron adored this ship, and that the man must be terminally delusional because of this.

“Obviously she’s got a few dings here and there. Some of her tech is a bit old. The IFF transponder is Imperial so it’s pretty outdated, and they lost the old sensor rectenna during Endor so we’ve got a civilian one now – Corellian Engineering Corps, not as fancy. But you should see her in action – I mean, I guess you have, but watching her and flying on her are two completely different things.”

“You sound like a used speeder salesman, Dameron.”

They were in the maintenance access tunnel that ran out into one of the _Falcon_ ’s mandibles. Dameron had been vague about something he wanted to fix on the shield generator and was presently making what Hux thought was entirely unorthodox use of a screwdriver on a twist of wires spilling out of the back of a panel that made Hux’s teeth itch just to look at. It was far too close in here; even with Dameron kneeling, the toes of Hux’s boots were merely inches away from the other man’s legs, and if he stepped back to try and give himself room he bumped his head on the sloping ceiling of the tunnel. Clearly this entire ship had been designed with people of Dameron’s unimpressive stature in mind. It was also _warm_ ; Hux could feel perspiration gathering on his upper lip and he was for once regretting the heaviness of his greatcoat around his shoulders. He supposed he should be grateful for actually being warm after months risking double pneumonia in that little two-bit shack they called a prison. But the heat coupled with the closeness of the walls, the oppressive nearness of everything including the faint smell of engine grease on Dameron’s jacket, was eliciting a prickle of anxiety at the back of his neck and the base of his wrists that was making his heartrate pick up in response. He was worried that if Dameron moved suddenly he might accidentally touch Hux, and the prospect of that was almost too much to bear.

“Can you hold it a little – more to the left? Up a bit?” There wasn’t enough room for the BB unit down here, so Hux had been consigned to flashlight holding duties, a slight to his dignity so enormous he was currently contemplating how far he would need to insert the screwdriver into Dameron’s ear before he actually reached brain.

Hux tilted the torch a little. “You do realise you’ve just redirected half the auxiliary power away from the main particle resonator?”

“Yeah, I’m trying to divert it to see if there’s a systems wide fault somewhere or if it’s just local to the deflector.”

Hux sighed. “I assume by that you mean the shields are overloading. What state are its stability actuators in?”

Dameron made a rueful sound between his teeth, sitting back on his heels. “They’ve seen better days.” His voice tilted up slightly at the end as though he were asking a question. Hux, who had stiffened at Dameron’s movement, clenched the fingers of the one hand he was keeping securely tucked behind his back. His natural curiosity was making him want to move closer to the panel so he could get a proper look at the problem, but that would have meant being nearer to Dameron.

“At what percentage are they remaining stable?”

Dameron shrugged in an infuriating way. “To be honest, that’s the problem – they fluctuate all over the place.”

Hux gritted his teeth. “ _Roughly_ ,” he ground out. Curse these Resistance engineers and their slipshod concept of ship maintenance.

“Okay, an estimate? It sticks between sixty and eighty-five percent. Anything lower it usually holds pretty steady, any higher and it fritzes out. But it’s got a big margin where we’re never sure what it’s going to do, and the lowest we’ve known it to overload is around fifty-two.”

Hux allowed a small nod. Without being able to actually see the problem, it sounded like one of the motion dampeners that kept the shield generator cushioned from reverberations from the engine was starting to degrade, allowing vibration to disrupt the power signal that prompted the shields to activate.

“Want to take a look?” Hux had slipped briefly into his own thoughts, a thousand possible solutions to the problem whirring through his head, and he visibly jumped when Dameron stood up, his presence expanding and filling out into the corners of the maintenance tunnel in a way that made Hux want to run or _bite_ him. Dameron was a good four or five inches shorter than Hux and from this angle Hux could see that in the light from the torch his ridiculous eyelashes were actually casting shadows on his cheeks.

Dameron gestured towards the open panel. “Seriously. She’s all yours. I can put my jacket on the floor for you to kneel on if you want?” he added, and he actually had the audacity to _wink_. Hux felt a blush of indignation starting in his ears, the heat working swiftly into his cheeks and his neck. He was just glad it was so dark in here.

“Don’t _test_ me, Dameron,” he said through his teeth, handing the torch over and angling his body past Dameron’s so as to avoid any contact. To his credit, Dameron took a step back away from him to give him space, tipping the torch so its light fell fully across the panel.

Hux hesitated. The idea of kneeling down in this boxy little maintenance tunnel onboard an enemy starship, with _Poe Dameron_ of all people standing over him, was so entirely anathema to his sense of self-preservation that for a moment he couldn’t get his legs to cooperate. His heart was still quickening in his throat and he could feel little jagged spikes of adrenaline making the nerve endings at his joints prickle and fizz. There really wasn’t enough air in here.

Well, this was _absurd_. Frustration – with himself, with Dameron, with the entire ludicrous cataclysm of events that had led to this situation – leapt like a flame inside him. This was fine. This was easy. He knew what he was doing.

He swept back the tails of his coat and knelt, rather more awkwardly than he would have preferred – he had still somehow underestimated how narrow the tunnel was and overbalanced slightly as he came down on one knee, having to put his hand against the wall to steady himself. He looked at the jumbled contents of the access panel.

For a moment, panic spiked through him at the idea that he had no idea what he was seeing. The tangle of wires running amidst stability actuators and motion belays was so incomprehensible to him, so utterly alien compared to anything he had ever seen on a First Order ship, that it was as though he was a first-year engineering cadet newly arrived at the Academy, only able to visualise the insides of a ship’s engines as an illustration in a book. Hux swallowed around the sudden parch in his throat. He could feel Dameron’s eyes boring into him, the beam from the torch spotlighting him and his imminent failure like the merciless gaze of the hundred, hundred commandants who had ever stood over him, near-salivating at the prospect of Hux slipping up so they could bring the hard edge of their cane down across his head – _stupid Armitage, pathetic, you can’t even do something as simple as this_ –

 _Stars_ , he hated people standing behind him where he couldn’t see them.

His hand lifted towards the panel trembled, once, and he drew a deep breath, held it. He laid his hand, very gently, against where the curve of the motion belay connected to the hard edge of the actuator, and _felt_.

At first, it was still near impossible to detect what he supposed to be looking for, and he would have vastly preferred to have the generator blueprints in front of him while working. But as he guided his hand along the inner framework of the mechanism, his fingers curled inwards slightly and he felt the soft pads of his fingertips brush just lightly against a rough patch on the alusteel coating. _Rust_.

“ _Ah_ ,” Hux said triumphantly.

Behind him, Damerson shifted, the light joggling as he began to move closer. “What is it – ?”

Hux was suddenly aware that Dameron was _right behind him_ , crowding him against the wall, and the only available escape route to Hux was a dead end. Fear shot through him so violently that he jerked to his feet, his fingers scrabbling against the wall for purchase, his shoulder banging painfully against the open panel door as he thrust himself backwards away from Dameron, his lips pulled back from his teeth in a snarl of pure, feral instinct. For a moment, he and Dameron stared at each other, Dameron’s handsome face stupid with incomprehension, the only sound Hux’s panting, ragged breath.

Dameron was the one who spoke first. “Hey. Hey, it’s okay,” he said, his voice soft, conciliatory in a way that made Hux itch with fury. He lifted his free hand that wasn’t holding the flashlight, palm up, as though to show Hux he didn’t have a weapon on him. “It’s okay,” Dameron repeated, his voice lower and more insistent this time. “I’m sorry I made you think I was going to hurt you.”

Hux moved his head in a small, irritable negative, as though he could bat Dameron’s words away. He didn’t want to be here anymore, in this close, sweaty space with the smell of oil and wood smoke and the more subtle, atavistic scent of Dameron’s skin filling his nostrils. He had never imagined he would long to be back in the derelict little prison-cell on the hillside, but he was now craving the relative solitude it allowed him so badly that he could have climbed out of his own skin to escape.

“Your motion dampener,” he said, humiliation rising through him anew at the staccato tightness in his voice. “It is rusted. I would suggest you repair it as best you can before we launch.”

Dameron didn’t reply, but he moved to one side to let Hux step past him. Hux could feel the weight of his gaze on his back all the way down the corridor.

~

On the boarding ramp, they ran into the Jedi. As always, Hux was struck by how impossibly _young_ she was, her firm gaze and the long, strong lines of her greyhound’s body belying the almost overwhelming newness of her. The Resistance and its ideals, sending lion-hearted children to war. He knew the First Order wasn’t any better.

“Any luck?” she said, her brown eyes flicking between Hux and Dameron. Despite how cold it was outside there was high colour in her cheeks and perspiration on her brow from recent exertion. Everything about her was vivid with life, and health, and power.

Dameron nodded. “Yeah. Hux found the problem. There’s rust on one of the motion belays that’s stopping the dampener from working properly. Should be a reasonably easy fix.” Hux wanted to snort in derision at the carefree ease of the statement, but he restrained himself.

The Jedi was looking at him, mirroring Dameron’s nod. “Good,” she said. “That’s good. Thank you, general. We appreciate the help.”

Hux was so utterly bewildered by the simplicity of her words, the easy, straightforward gratitude, that he found himself opening and closing his mouth once, senselessly, like a dull-witted child caught in a lie. He was so sure that she was mocking him that his first instinct was to snap at her, but the steady, cool weight of her gaze hadn’t left his face, her own mouth a serious line.

Embarrassment replaced his annoyance and confusion, sending heat into his face. “You’re welcome,” he said stiffly, and he wasn’t sure if any of them believed that was true, but it seemed to please the Jedi, whose grave expression softened imperceptibly.

“Rose and I are going to do some pre-flight checks,” she said, turning to Dameron. “We need to leave in no later than two days, so I’ll get on fixing the motion dampener.”

“I’ll see what I can scrounge up for parts,” Dameron said as she moved past them into the ship. He looked at Hux. “Looks like we’re all glad you’re here, Hugs,” he said, his mouth tilting in a crooked little smile that made something inside Hux pinch. Hux lifted his chin a little, swallowing a small barb of inexplicable hurt.

“You are a truly terrible liar, Dameron,” he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the 'where's ren?' section of hux's escape is heavily inspired by the bride's escape from hospital in kill bill vol. 1


	5. Bait and Switch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> very minor mention of self-harm ideation towards the end of this chapter.

On the morning they left for Exegol space, they blasted the engines on the _Falcon_ to shed the ice that had formed overnight. Rey flicked open all the throttles, listening to the air brakes roar as they strained and fought against the power of the sublights. It would be good to give the ship her head; keeping the _Falcon_ in dock for any length of time always made Rey nervous because of the ship’s unique ability to develop problems seemingly out of thin air. She sat with her feet propped on the dash for a while as she let the engines work, her gaze hanging somewhere at the furthest edge of the cockpit’s viewfinder without quite seeing what she was looking at.

She heard Chewie come in behind her and grumble about C-3PO moving the pilot seat headrest. Rey suspected the droid had been cleaning again; he had been struggling ever since the memory wipe on Kijimi, a decision which in retrospect Rey was finding increasingly difficult to reconcile with her conscience. She was still trying to audit the cost of this war, from its most overwhelming sacrifices to the miniscule, almost painfully banal losses that were all the more suffocating for their immeasurable multiplicity.

The fix on the motion dampener had been relatively easy after all. Rey had shaved off the rusted section on the alusteel and welded a new layer on top, and the next time she ran a stress test on the shields they held steady at a solid 85%. As it turned out, Hux’s brilliance lay in his ability to see the simplest, cleanest solution to a problem; they had been over-thinking the issue with the generator for months, imagining it must be something infinitely complex and requiring multiple system overhauls. That it could be something so basic as rust was almost funny, particularly knowing that its discovery was thanks to one of the finest engineering minds in the galaxy whose most recent utilisation had been bent to the destruction of planets. Well, it was _almost_ funny.

She heard a scuffle of movement behind her and turned her head, leaning around the side of the pilot’s seat. “Chewie, I’ll fix the headrest – ” but it was Finn who was looking back at her, half-stooped in the act of lowering a box of equipment onto the floor.

He looked, briefly, uncertain, embarrassed almost, as though he hadn’t expected anyone else to be here – _or as though he meant to avoid you_ , Rey’s mind whispered darkly to her. She pushed the thought away, as she had pushed a thousand other similar thoughts away, and made herself smile.

“Nearly finished packing?” she said. “I know it looks like I’m working really hard but, you see, it’s a skill.”

“Learnt that from Poe?” He almost smiled back at her, not quite. Rey’s heart squeezed in her chest, hard enough to hurt. Force _dammit_ , she wanted – she wanted – she didn’t know what she wanted, but she couldn’t stand that hurt, distant, frozen look in Finn’s eyes anymore. She could almost have shaken him now as much as smiled at him or laughed with him. _Come back to me, it’s still me_.

They sorted the tech in the box in what passed for companionable silence, until Rose came in and told them off for stacking the power cells with the spare batteries because they would drain the magnetism out of each other. There followed a good deal of re-arranging and re-stacking, with Rey and Finn gently teasing Rose for putting little laminated name-labels like _Marisol_ and _Cadie_ on all her tools, while Rose grinned good-naturedly and insisted that _actually_ they did have personalities thank you very much, not everyone was such a philistine. It was nearly noon by the time they had finished, and the light was the best it was ever going to be.

~

_“Cleared to ascend, Jint airspace via SQRA departure, RINGER transition, then as filed. Climb maintain ten thousand. Departure frequency one-three-five, decimal niner, squawk four-seven-six-three.”_

“Cleared.” From the nav seat, Poe listened to Rey and the ATC run through their final checks. He felt rather than heard the cavernous hull of the _Falcon_ shudder as it shrugged its way free of the snow, the unsteady, metallic _thunk_ as the sublight thrusters engaged. His bulky height crammed into the co-pilot’s chair, Chewbacca trilled an acknowledgement and keyed in the ascent code.

“ _YT-Thirteen-Hundred, cleared for takeoff runway zero-one_.”

“Cleared for takeoff runway zero-one, YT-Thirteen-Hundred.”

Poe looked across at Hux, who was currently sitting in the other nav seat with his narrow shoulders hiked together as though he expected summary execution to be visited upon him at any moment. Poe stared at his pinched, furious profile until Hux gave a haughty little jerk of his chin and scowled at him. Poe grinned.

“Can’t be your first time on a freighter, Hugs,” he said. “Nervous?”

“It’s my first time on a barely space-worthy rust magnet,” Hux snapped, flinching as the _Falcon_ gave a particularly violent jerk. Chewie roared over his shoulder something along the lines of _who are you calling a rust bucket?_ but with a more colourful Shyriiwook analogy involving unfortunate things happening to the male human anatomy. Rey calmly talked over Hux’s indignant splutter of a reply, signing off from the ATC as the _Falcon_ jumped, vibrated hard enough to rattle one of the overhead panels loose, made a dizzying little two-beat skip as it verged slightly sideways, and was airborne.

Poe heard Hux exhale sharply, looked across at him again to see him, briefly, squeeze his eyes shut, his hands gripping the armrests of the nav seat so tightly his knuckles looked bone-bleached. He realised that he had never seen Hux’s expression so nakedly, starkly unguarded before, and he stared for a moment, wonderingly, at the flexible motion of Hux’s mouth, the pink tip of his tongue just visible, fleetingly, as he wet his lips. He sensed Poe’s eyes on him again and glanced his way, the vulnerability in his face already shutting down, but Poe had turned his head. It had just been a look.

Poe waited until the _Falcon_ had burnt through the glassy, freezing shoals of the planet’s atmosphere, until the artificial gravity re-adjusted and the motion dampeners kicked in as the ship leapt to hyperspace, before he threw off the nav seat harness and jumped to his feet, extending a hand towards Hux as though he meant to help him up. Hux looked at him, then at his hand, as though Poe had offered him the entrails of a dead tauntaun with about as much ceremony.

“Come on,” Poe said, ignoring him. “I’ll show you where you’re gonna be sleeping.”

~

Hux said, “This is _it_?”

“Yep.” Poe sprawled back on the lower bunk, kicking one foot up against the ladder. “You a top or a bottom kinda guy?”

He didn’t think he had ever seen Hux go _so_ red quite so fast. He flushed from the very roots of his hair, almost from the very tips of his pale, nearly translucent eyelashes, right down to where the curve of his neck was just exposed by the high collar of the deep green Resistance-regulation shirt he was wearing. “ _I beg your pardon_?” Hux spluttered, his voice emerging in an indignant squeak.

“Yeah.” Poe waved an encompassing hand towards the bunk above him. “Top bunk? Bottom bunk? You have a preference?”

“I – ” Hux clenched his fists at his sides, looking for a moment so helplessly, pointlessly _cross_ that Poe almost felt sorry for him.

“I can’t sleep here,” he finally said, his voice corncrake harsh.

Poe lifted his eyebrows. “Uh, hate to break it to you Hugs, but we don’t exactly have executive suite options here.”

“I can’t sleep here with _everybody else_.”

Poe sat up slowly, pushing a handful of his hair back off his face in frustration. This was _not_ a problem he had been anticipating. “Look – what are you going to do then? Sleep in the galley?”

“If I must,” Hux said, at the same time as Finn’s voice said, behind him, “He doesn’t have to.”

Hux jumped so noticeably that Poe did feel a pang of pity for him this time. Finn was holding a rucksack and was already bending to pull belongings out of one of the footlockers, his expression hard, deliberately neutral.

“So this sleeping arrangement thing is getting kind of complicated,” Poe began, but Finn shook his head.

“It’s not. I’m going to sleep on the main crew deck with Chewie. I don’t want to sleep in here.” He didn’t need to amend the silent _with him_ for the meaning to be blatantly clear.

Poe looked from Finn, to Hux, back again. Finn was keeping his back carefully averted as he sorted items into his bag, but Poe could feel waves of distress and hatred and something deeper, more painful and childlike radiating off him. Hux hadn’t moved since he had flinched away from Finn’s voice, his back ramrod straight, the gaunt bones of his face stark beneath his unreadable expression.

“Buddy,” Poe said to Finn’s back, trying for gentleness, “this doesn’t have to be a thing, we can sort something out – ”

“Quite,” Hux interrupted stiffly. “I’m sure if FN-2187 wants – ”

“My _name_ is Finn.” Finn’s voice was a snarl, and he rounded on Hux so quickly that Poe was sure he was going to hit him. He was on his feet in the same moment that Hux stepped back into the wall, knocking a small pile of books over. Finn’s fist was still at his side, but his eyes blazed as he stared into Hux’s face.

Hux’s nostrils flared as he held Finn’s gaze, his chin lifted in an expression of what Poe at first took to be defiance. But then Hux blinked, twice, a shadow subtler and more evasive crossing his face, his eyelids lowering almost demurely. “Of course,” Hux said, his voice silken. “Finn. My mistake.”

Poe saw Finn’s throat move as he swallowed, squeezing the fingers of his knitted fist as though his hand ached. Now that he was looking at Hux he seemed unable to stop, as though he were searching for a trace of something, an answer to a question he could never bring himself to ask, in the inscrutable lines of Hux’s face. Then Finn’s shoulders drooped, his brow creasing in pain, and he stepped away, turning to pick up his rucksack.

“If you need me, I’ll be on the gun deck,” he said over his shoulder. Poe opened his mouth to reply, realised he couldn’t think of a single thing to say. For the entire time Finn had been in the room, he hadn’t looked at Poe once.

~

There was a level of freedom on this ship that Hux found almost overwhelming. It was a freedom that was admittedly tempered by the fact that he could barely move without falling over sundry _Falcon_ crewmembers, and it was still only approximately six hours since they’d left Jint space – but to have such time on his hands… His entire life up until now had been measured in increments, each cycle meticulously allotted units of productivity and achievement that Hux could calculate down to the second. Even as a prisoner of the Resistance he had still had something to _do_ with himself, tasked with a seemingly endless workload of devices and hardware and broken down pieces of tech that General Organa had sent his way in a regular stream. He reminded himself, tersely, that he still _was_ a prisoner here, just one who didn’t have a blaster pointing at him at any given moment. He had noticed the engineer Tico move her hand to her own weapon, almost reflexively, the first time they encountered one another onboard the ship; he could virtually see the workings of her imagination flurrying across her face, inventing a small play-by of ways of potentially ending his life. He would have found it amusing if he wasn’t so exhausted by people wanting him dead.

He supposed he should be grateful that no one was actively trying to kill him here. Yet. He had still closely watched Dameron chewing on some of the repellent freeze-dry noodles everyone was allotted for their evening meal before he tried any himself. Not that he had managed to actually swallow much. His stomach was still cramping in terror every time whoever happened to be closest to him so much as shifted their weight.

He had only just realised he was pacing up and down the short corridor that led to the forward cargo hold (an entirely profligate waste of energy that he immediately resolved to correct in himself) when the Jedi appeared in the open doorway up ahead. She had her hair in those strange knots she had often been pictured wearing in First Order ‘Wanted’ holovids, and her face looked freshly scrubbed.

Hux froze, feeling a surge of utterly ludicrous guilt as though he had been caught trespassing. To his astonishment, the Jedi smiled at him.

“I was just looking for you, general,” she said. “There are a couple of things I wanted to discuss with you about the mission. Would you mind?” She gestured back in the direction she had come, towards the communal crew quarters.

Hux managed a perfunctory tightening of the edges of his mouth. “I remain at your disposal,” he said, unable to quell the small note of sourness that crept into his voice. Despite growing evidence to the contrary, he couldn’t quite convince himself that her unfailing politeness towards him was meant in ridicule. But the Jedi simply inclined her head a little and made a graceful _after you_ motion with her hand.

To Hux’s relief, there was no one else on the crew deck. He wasn’t sure he could have borne the inevitable cross-examination with an audience. There followed a small moment of awkwardness where neither of them sat, Hux because an ingrained Arkanis social protocol told him he should wait for her to do so, the Jedi seemingly out of some misguided attempt at making him feel more at ease. It wasn’t working. Eventually, she gave a ready laugh and pointed at one of the chairs.

“It’s not a trap,” she said. “Please, sit,” Again, that courteous gesture.

Very slowly, Hux sat down on the bench furthest away from her, keeping his spine straight. The Jedi followed suit, pulling one ankle to prop across her knee. She laced her fingers together and rested them on her leg.

Her next words surprised him. “You look tired,” she said. “Do you drink caf? I can always make some, it might make this feel less strange.” Her easy frankness, the unabashed directness of her acknowledging of the entire, baffling _oddness_ of the situation, was something Hux was finding increasingly wrong-footing. It was almost easier to deal with Dameron’s constant teasing; the Jedi’s openness was as incomprehensible to Hux as if she were conversing with him in some relic species dialect.

“I – ” He stopped, wet his lips. This was more difficult than he had imagined. “I prefer tea – but caf will do,” he found himself amending, stiffly. It seemed graceless to meet her courtesy with ingratitude.

“Tea?” Her expression brightened. Perhaps she thought she had found a chink in his armour. “What kind?”

 _Great stars_ , this entire conversation was unbearable. “Tarine. But I don’t expect you to have that here.” He hadn’t meant it to sound quite as cutting as it came out.

The Jedi merely smiled, in a neutral kind of way. “Maybe we can get you some,” she said. “There’s no reason you can’t have some of the things you like.”

 _How generous_. Hux thought it rather than said it, feeling his mood curdle darkly. He allowed a small nod by way of acknowledgement.

The Jedi sat back in her chair, cracking her knuckles in an absent-minded sort of way. Hux looked at her hands warily; she was strong, physically powerful, clearly didn’t need her lightsabre or even the Force to cause considerable damage. Most ironic that he was trapped here alone with the scavenger girl of Ren’s obsession, and she could as easily smash Hux’s head against a wall as the so-called _Supreme Leader_ himself.

The Jedi said, “The command codes. I imagine they won’t disable any automated defence systems the _Finalizer_ might have operational?”

“No. The codes only allow the navigational system to be unlocked.”

“I see. Do you know if the defence systems will be active?”

“Impossible to tell. If the ship has been scuttled as you say, it may have entirely lost power, but it is also entirely feasible that some auxiliary systems may still be online.”

She nodded, her expression thoughtful. “Is there a way of manually disabling the defences from a distance?”

“Of course not. That ship is an exceptional example of First Order engineering, you cannot simply hack into its defences like a common slicer.”

“Well.” She tilted her head, looking almost apologetic. “A slicer _did_.”

He closed his mouth, his face hot. That was his failure alone to bear, a private grief she had no right dragging into the cold like a shivering animal in its death throes. How easily he had been swayed by her cunning manners; he could almost admire her for it if he wasn’t so furious with pain.

The Jedi was going on, her voice contemplative as though she were solving a problem in her head as she spoke. “Poe and I’ve been talking about this. The _Finalizer_ seems to be stuck in Exegol’s gravitational orbit, so we’ll pull it in as best we can before using the escape shuttle to board if we need to. There’s room for a small ground team. Once we’re there we’ll deal with whatever systems the ship may still have active.”

Such _optimism_ from these naïve Resistance fools. Hux almost wanted to laugh, if he didn’t think it would choke him. In a brief moment of weakness, he wished he wasn’t wearing gloves so he could dig his nails into his palms hard enough to draw blood and keep scraping for the pain. He swallowed hard, clenched his fists instead. _Weak Armitage, you are_ weak.

“It sounds as though you have everything very much in hand,” he said, working to keep his voice level. The Jedi laughed softly, sounding, for her, almost cynical.

“Not really,” she said. “We need you, general.” – Yes, what _terrible_ misfortune that was – “We can’t do this without you. And I was hoping – ” she paused, seemed to consider her words carefully – “hoping that we could negotiate something.”

Hux felt his mouth twist. “Really.”

“Yes.” She looked up at him again, held his gaze. “General Organa and I were talking about how we could increase your privileges after this. I know you spoke with Poe about some things, but there’s no reason why we can’t allow you some freedoms around the base, de-escalate your guard. As you earn our trust. Because you do need to earn our trust, general,” she said, the sincerity in her voice hardening into seriousness, her eyes on his. “You do understand that?”

“Yes, earning the _trust_ of the Resistance,” Hux said, his temper flaring. “Am I to presume this involves me prostrating myself in contrition at the feet of your princess every day? Or merely cowering in gratitude for the scraps of dignity you offer me?”

The Jedi was silent for a moment. She cracked her knuckles again. Hux braced himself.

“As I said – ” He couldn’t stop himself flinching when she stood up – “It’s negotiable.” She gave him a small smile. “Thank you for your time, general. I’ll leave you to get some rest.”

He didn’t watch her leave, instead listening to the quick tread of her footsteps receding as she disappeared down the corridor. He sat very still, his mind teeming.

He would give them the codes. Oh yes. He may only have one hand left to play, but he was damned if he was going to let it go to waste.


	6. The Rules of Courtly Love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> super early update on this because u know my gingerpilot thirst is real and this chapter just begged to be written. thank you so much for every comment and kudos guys, they all genuinely mean so much.

Poe couldn’t sleep.

Rey and Rose had both been practical about the sleeping arrangements. At least, Rose demonstrably had despite any reservations she might have had about sharing a communal space with General Hux. She had curled up in the bunk nearest the window with the blanket pulled halfway over her head and was snoring softly within minutes. Rey had said she was going to check on the shield generator before coming to bed – that had been two hours ago, and Poe didn’t think even the _Falcon_ required that kind of attention at this time of the cycle. Hux, meanwhile, hadn’t come to bed at all.

Poe flung himself over onto his left side, staring across the room to where Rose’s rumpled form was just visible. He almost wanted to wake her up so he could ask her what she thought about this whole crazy situation. She was probably closest to Finn after Poe himself, although admittedly after the battle on Crait there had been a noticeable cooling between the two, the cause of which Poe had gradually pieced together without directly asking either of them. It wasn’t like Poe hadn’t made a similar mistake a couple dozen times before. Maybe waking Rose specifically on the subject of Finn wouldn’t be the best idea after all.

Hux’s absence itched at him, even more than Finn’s and Rey’s. Surely the man wasn’t going to keep up his insane ritual of sleeplessness here. Poe assumed that Hux must sleep at _some_ point, presumably in fitful little catnaps in-between darting mistrustful glares over his shoulder. Poe kept thinking back to their conversation in the bunk room earlier, Hux’s expression of almost panic when he realised he was going to have to share a communal space, the very nearly plaintive note in his voice when he insisted that he _couldn’t sleep here with everybody else_. It was an odd concept to Poe, who could and did sleep anywhere (current circumstances notwithstanding): propped against a crate in a hangar, crammed into the passenger seat of a speeder, at the controls of his X-Wing (not while in flight of course – well, apart from that one time). He wondered under what conditions Hux found it acceptable to sleep, and if it would be possible for Poe to help him achieve them. He realised, with the same pleasant sort of lazy surprise with which he had discovered he found Hux beautiful, that he _did_ want to help him, even if it was with something as trivial as just relaxing for once. Poe liked a challenge, and there was currently no greater challenge on his horizon than Armitage Hux.

Making a decision, he threw back the covers and clambered out of bed. BB-8, slumbering in their recharging station, uttered a soft, muted chime as though talking in their sleep. Poe passed his hand across their dome, gently, quieting the droid. He pulled his boots on over his bare feet and headed for the door.

Poe made his way through the empty corridors of the _Falcon_ , absorbing the ever-present murmur of the engines, the soft tick and chirp of the navigational system as it plotted the ship’s course across lightyears. He paused at the entrance to the crew deck: silence within, both Finn and Chewie must have been asleep. Poe went on his way, taking the long route around the _Falcon’s_ circumference, past the engineering station and the cargo bay. No Hux. And no Rey either.

He was just starting to find the eerie quiet of the ship distinctly uncomfortable when he turned the corner that rounded off into the section of the ship where the transparisteel viewpoint opened out into the deep, starshone void of space, and saw Hux sitting on the little relief bunk by the wall. Poe stopped, not wanting to startle him, surprised that Hux hadn’t already heard his footsteps and leapt up in a snarl of defensiveness. Poe could see he wasn’t asleep; he was looking towards the viewpoint with an open, slightly slack expression on his face, his eyes heavy-lidded. The cool, silvered light of the starshine was bathing the lovely, strange angles of his face, his pale skin almost glowing with it. His hair, which he had persisted in wearing in that severe, slicked back style ever since arriving at the Resistance base, was ruffled as though he had been running his fingers through it, falling forward in fine, unrepentantly straight strands onto his forehead. For a moment, Poe could only gaze at him, feeling something yield, helplessly, yearningly, deep in his chest.

Then Hux blinked, as though a delicate spell had been broken, and said without looking at him, “To what do I owe the pleasure, commander?”

He didn’t sound especially snarky, and Poe didn’t even feel motivated to correct him on the title thing. He slid his hands into the pockets of his cargo pants, leaning one bare shoulder against the wall. It hadn’t occurred to him until now that he perhaps should have put something on over the top of his under-vest; Hux was sitting primly with his knees together, his coat draped round his shoulders despite the _Falcon_ ’s temperate climate. The possibility struck Poe for the first time that it was perhaps a kind of security thing for him, that he felt safer wrapped in the heavy fabric of the coat than he did with the narrow, impossibly slender lines of his body exposed. The idea of it made Poe’s heart hurt.

“Think I’ve caught insomnia off you, Hugs,” he said, trying and failing to sound vaguely jocular. To his astonishment Hux actually laughed, or at least, gave a breathy sort of exhale that lifted the corners of his mouth slightly.

“Pity. I believe it’s a terminal condition.”

Poe couldn’t quite smile. He was looking at him, and looking at him, and he didn’t think he could stop, he didn’t think he had ever seen anything so beautiful as Hux looked to him in that moment, with the soft, loose fall of his hair and his face gentled in starlight. His imagination was suddenly burning with the thought of what it would feel like to take one of Hux’s elegant hands in his, to peel the glove from each fingertip, to press his lips to his palm, his wrist – would Hux’s pulse flutter beneath his mouth – would he make a soft sound in the back of his throat, something like pleasure – Poe wanted to be the one who made Hux make that sound –

“You’re staring, Dameron.” The familiar, caustic edge had returned to Hux’s voice, drawing Poe back to himself. He shifted his weight, suddenly entirely unsure what to do with his limbs. He rubbed the back of his neck, kicked his boot lightly against the wall. Thank _fuck_ Hux wasn’t a mind-reader.

“Sorry,” Poe said, once he had just about managed to put his tongue back in his head. “It’s just – you – you look – different – with your hair like that, and – and stuff.”

Hux frowned, lifting his hand to push absently at where his fringe fell across his brow, his expression mildly perplexed as though he were surprised to discover he possessed such a thing as hair.

“Ridiculous,” he murmured softly, and Poe wasn’t sure whether he was referring to his hair or to Poe.

Pushing himself away from the wall, he gestured at the space on the bunk next to Hux. “Can I sit?”

Hux followed Poe’s indicating gesture, looked back up at him. “This is your ship, is it not?”

Poe shrugged, feeling inexplicably abashed. “Well, I mean, it’s Rey’s. But I don’t have to sit down if you don’t want me to. I don’t want to make you feel uncomfortable.”

Hux stared at him, the edges of his eyes flexing slightly as though he were trying to calculate some protracted mathematical problem. “I am – unsure why that would be of any account to you. You are free to do as you wish.”

Poe sighed. Force _alive_ , he was hard work. “Okay, I’m gonna sit, but if it makes you feel weird at all, you can tell me, yeah?”

Again that narrow, searching look, as though Hux was trying to decipher a lie he had sensed but not yet uncovered. Poe lowered himself slowly onto the bunk next to him, careful not to sit too close. He noticed a very slight tightening of Hux’s hands where they were folded together in his lap, but otherwise he didn’t move.

The silence that ensued between them would almost have felt companionable, if Poe’s brain hadn’t been insisting on running a detailed blow-by-blow enactment of what it would feel like to claim Hux’s mouth with his own, feeling the tautness in that brittle, angular frame melt against him. Shit, did it really even _matter_ that he was having these thoughts? It wasn’t like he was going to propose to the guy. Not marriage, anyway. Sure, there was probably some Republic precedence in place that disallowed fraternization with enemy prisoners of war, but no harm in thinking about it, right? Right. Poe wasn’t going to waste the energy feeling guilty about it. He could do with a couple of good fantasies to keep him occupied, anyway. And if General Hux happened to be the object of those fantasies – well, forbidden stuff was always hot as hell. And Hux was hot as _hell_.

Beside him, Hux stirred, lifting his hand. Poe followed the motion all the way up to Hux’s face, where Hux touched his wrist against his mouth and gave the tiniest of half-stifled yawns, briefly closing his eyes before he murmured a soft ‘excuse me’. The sight of it made Poe ache beneath his breastbone.

“You must be exhausted,” he said, his voice a little rough. Hux moved his head dismissively, not quite a _no_.

“Adjusting to recycled oxygen always makes me yawn,” he said. It seemed like a bit of a far-fetched claim to Poe, but he decided to let it slide. He stretched his legs out in front of him, moving his toes in his boots.

“Nice view,” he said, and immediately groaned inwardly, thinking how much he needed to be punched for being that unbelievably corny. _What the fuck, Dameron? Did you lose_ all _your game in that last X-Wing crash?_

Hux didn’t reply immediately, probably because he was thinking about what a nerf-herding laserbrain he was sitting next to. Then: “When I – ” He stopped, seemed to rethink. “Sometimes, at the end of a shift, I used to like to turn off the audio simulation in my quarters and just watch the ships glide past in the dark.”

Poe looked at him in surprise. Hux was still gazing out of the viewpoint. It was the most he had ever revealed about himself to Poe, a glimpse of something trivial that seemed at the same time so intimate Poe held the image of it in his mind for a moment, knowing it was precious in a way he couldn't quite understand. The idea of Hux having things he liked struck him, briefly, as almost preposterous, but Poe mentally chided himself for the thought: Hux was still a person after all. Underneath everything, despite everything – he was still a person.

Beside him, Hux stirred again, giving a cramped little shiver.

“Are you cold?” Poe said. “I can get you a blanket.”

“I’m fine,” Hux said, and his voice was softer than Poe had ever heard it. “I’m just…very tired.”

“You need to try and get some sleep,” Poe said, very gently. “You’re going to make yourself sick again at this rate.”

Again, that slight, mirthless chuckle. “It hardly matters. You haven’t exactly brought me with you for my physical attributes.”

 _Damn but you’ve got a lot of them though_ , Poe thought, told himself this wasn’t the time. “But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be taking basic care of yourself.”

“You’re one to talk.” Hux glanced at him, his eyes amused. “I’m surprised you still have use of both your legs after some of the stunts I’ve seen you pull in that plane of yours.”

“Aww, Hugs, I didn’t know you cared.”

Hux rolled his eyes. “Are you ever going to stop calling me by that ridiculous name?”

Poe lifted his hands. “You know how it is – when inspiration strikes you’ve just got to go along with it.”

“Yes, I can tell how extremely pleased with yourself you are about it.”

Poe looked away, grinning. This felt good. This felt – _normal_. He wanted to hold onto this glimmering, fragile moment between the two of them where it felt like they were the only people alive, their consciousnesses brushing like the barest of fingertips against one another.

“I have been running some calculations,” Hux said. Poe glanced at him, wondering if he meant actual, _literal_ calculations, and if so on what equipment, or if he just meant in his own head. Probably in his own head, knowing Hux. “If I am correct, we have another half-cycle before we reach our destination. Obviously, I don’t have access to any of your navigational instruments,” he went on, sounding almost, briefly diffident. “So my estimation may be off by some margin. But I must admit – ” haltingly, as though the confession was painful – “having no particular duties to perform is making me – aware of the time. It is not something I am accustomed to.”

At first, the labyrinthine way in which Hux posed the statement left Poe frowning slightly, trying to unpick it, before the meaning of what he was trying to actually get at slid into place. Hux was – _bored_?

“You know, I’m sure there’s some kind of job we could find for you to do,” Poe said. “I mean, we’ve got Rose looking after the engines, but you were a dab hand spotting that fix on the shield generator. We could always put you on maintenance.”

“Maintenance.” That slightly wistful tone had quickly dissolved from Hux’s voice, and he gave his head a haughty little jerk. “I used to develop prototypes for elite star destroyers the likes of which have never been seen in the galaxy.” There was a cold, hard pride in his voice that Poe conceded was probably justified but also, considering what those prototypes had led to, utterly repellent. Hux was going on, his tone snide. “But then, far be it from me to expect you to visualise using my expertise as anything other than a mechanic.”

“Okay, I get it, you’re a genius – ” Poe began, but Hux cut across him, almost savagely.

“ _Hardly_. I trained, I studied, for _years_. People may well assume that I had everything handed to me, but I can assure you that was not the case by any stretch of the imagination.”

Well, _this_ seemed personal. “I know most of the Resistance profiles I read on you” – not that Poe was going to admit he had only looked at the ones with pictures – “always mentioned you were the youngest general in the First Order. I guess your dad was pretty high up – ”

Hux whipped his head round to look at him so fast that Poe actually leant back away from him. “My position has _nothing_ to do with who my father was,” Hux hissed, his teeth showing.

“Sure. Okay. Take it easy,” Poe said, trying to relax back into his previous comfortable stance and finding it altogether extremely difficult. “I didn’t mean any offence.”

“ _Of course_ you didn’t.” Hux’s voice dripped with sarcasm. He had resumed his own posture gazing out of the viewpoint, but Poe could see him working his gloved fingers together against his palms where they rested in his lap. That trembling of a connection between them seemed to have fractured entirely, and Poe felt a tug of inexplicable sadness for it.

“I’m sure there’s something we can find for you to do,” he repeated, a bit limply, but Hux was suddenly looking at him again, his expression fixed, almost – desperate, his eyes gleaming. “If this mission doesn’t go the way the Resistance wants,” he said, an undercurrent of intensity in his voice that ran right through Poe. “If I can’t give you what you want – what will happen to me?”

Poe stared back at him. There seemed to be suddenly less than inches between their faces, and his gaze was drawn over and over to the tender cupid’s bow of Hux’s upper lip. Hux's lips were slightly parted as he breathed quickly, and Poe imagined brushing his thumb across them, lightly enough to make Hux shiver.

He remembered that a reply was expected of him just in time. “Nothing’s going to happen to you,” he said. “You defected. You have protected status under the Republic’s convention.”

“That doesn’t mean anything. Protocol regarding enemy prisoners is the first thing to suffer in time of war.”

“We’re not at war anymore,” Poe insisted, even if that wasn’t entirely true. “And the Resistance is different, anyway. We treat our prisoners well.”

“It is _impossible_ for you to guarantee such a naïve notion.”

“No,” Poe said, and he did lean forward into Hux’s space then, keeping his eyes on his. “But I can guarantee my own word. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

Hux stared at him, the edges of his nostrils flexing, his eyes very bright. “Don’t make fun of me, Dameron,” he whispered.

“I’m not,” Poe said, and they were close enough now that their breath mingled. “I promise to protect you. You know the way mandalorians make vows to the death? You have mine.”

Hux swallowed; Poe heard the soft _click_ of it in his throat. He knew in that moment that he was going to kiss him, and it would be the sweetest, most tender thing he had ever tasted.

But then Hux was pulling away, sitting back, fussing with his cuffs to hide the very obvious tremble in his hands.

“How _noble_ of you, Dameron,” he said, sounding rather breathless. “ _Most_ apt to make a bounty hunter’s promise.”

“Yeah, well.” Poe was feeling pretty breathless too, his heart hammering in his chest. “It was the best comparison I could think of. I meant it too, you know,” he added as Hux stood up, handling himself rather stiffly, gathering the folds of his greatcoat around him.

“Mm.” Hux twitched at his collar, brushed irritably at his hair again. “That remains to be seen. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some things to attend to.”

“What, more late-night moping over the next superweapon you couldn’t build?”

Hux turned, giving him a narrow, acerbic little smile. “Surely even _I_ am allowed a modicum of privacy, Dameron.”

Poe watched him leave, taking in every jagged motion of his starchy, austere little walk, until he was out of sight. Poe slumped back against the wall, gazing out of the viewpoint at the distant, blueshifting stars. Had he just promised to defend Armitage Hux to the death like some kind of knight seeking to court a capricious, highborn lady who was as likely to administer poison as bestow her favour?

Well, he’d done stupider things in the past.


	7. Blueshift

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i make up A LOT of nonsense about tea in the star wars universe in this chapter as a facilitator for discussion of a whole fuckton of unresolved emotional trauma, because man do hux and rey have that in bucket loads. as always, your comments and kudos mean so very much and i read them over and over with a big goofy smile on my face <3

Hux stepped into the cool, clammy atmosphere of the forward cargo hold and held his hand against the sensor until the door uttered a soft, two-tone beep and locked behind him. He was shivering, kept having to take small, quick gulps of air as the sensations of heat and cold and sometimes both simultaneously ran through his body. He couldn’t stay still, but the hold was too crammed with miscellaneous _stuff_ to pace in any satisfactory fashion so he crushed the side of his hand against his mouth, tore it away again with a snarl of fury at himself when he realised what he was doing. _You snivelling, cretinous wretch, the only way you can control your feelings is by tearing at your own flesh like an animal caught in a trap?_

He couldn’t stop the soft, strangled vocalisation, the almost-whimper, that shook free from his throat as he shivered again. There was a large crate of disused salvage equipment that looked as though it hadn’t seen the light of day in several centuries, and he rested a hand against it, and then his own weight, just lightly, closing his eyes.

He wanted Dameron out of his head.

The arrogance, the posturing, self-satisfied, swaggering _hubris_ of the man – Hux’s fury with him was so white hot that it chilled him as surely as a dunk beneath the surface of a frozen lake, but the pain in his throat kept making him swallow, his vision blurring. He rested his hot brow against the blissfully cool metal of the crate, the laboured whistle and catch of his own breathing almost suffocatingly loud in his ears. He didn’t want to think about him, didn’t want to think about the way his uncombed, sleep-tousled hair had shone almost inky in the light from the stars, how that one rich coil that always seemed to fall into his eyes had tumbled across his forehead and he hadn’t even brushed it back. He didn’t want to think about the tanned, muscular curvature of Dameron’s arms, ostentatiously exposed by his sleeveless vest, or the way his hands had looked: capable, sandpaper rough, no doubt callused and toughened from years flexing at the controls of an X-Wing, but sensitive from it too, light of touch, able to shift and explore and caress with an eliciting deftness – Hux sighed before he could stop himself, clenched his fists at his sides, caught his lower lip between his teeth and worried at it until the taste of copper filled his mouth.

The subject of masturbation had always been a purely logistical one in the past. Practically speaking, Hux would sooner have done without it entirely; the needs of his own body were by and large cumbersome and inefficient, and there was perhaps little Hux despised more than inefficiency. On the _Finalizer_ , his rank had afforded him quarters with the luxury of a private refresher, and once or twice a month he would perhaps allow thirty seconds in the sonic for his hand to move between his thighs, his release swift and mechanical.

It was a long time since he had allowed his mind to form so much as the barest outline of a fantasy about another person. That path only led to the most egregious of hurt.

Hux held himself very still, his aching fists still rigid at his sides, and willed his body to forget itself.

– he couldn’t stop thinking about how Dameron’s dark eyes had looked in the half-light, one side of his face dim in the gloaming, the other wreathed in starshine. The low, roughened intensity of his voice, that ridiculous vow he had made as those eyes had fixed on Hux’s with something like earnestness – _I promise to protect you_ –

It was all part of some elaborate jibe Dameron was making at his expense, he was certain of it. It was sheer weakness on Hux’s part that he had interpreted any flex, any cadence in Dameron’s voice that might have suggested otherwise, that he had let himself feel, for the briefest of seconds, the tiniest trembling of hope – the acrid taste of bile flooded his mouth and water filled his eyes, and for a moment he could only lean against the crate, gasping helplessly, sniffling in a fitful sort of way because his nose was running and his eyes wouldn’t stop _leaking_.

He knew that it was a lie. It always was. And he knew that he was going to drive himself mad with it if he couldn’t staunch these feelings at their dreadful, anguished root.

He had neatened the disarray of his hair and plucked the collar of his greatcoat close around his throat by the time he stepped out into the corridor again, and nearly walked straight into the Jedi.

She seemed considerably less surprised than Hux, who startled and tightened his shoulders, his hands moving reflexively up towards his chest and then, as he caught himself, back down and behind him to clasp together, pressing tight against his spine. Of course: she had probably sensed the pitiful tumult of his mind, the fastidious walls he had constructed around himself against Ren’s daily, exhausting mental onslaughts cracking and shivering all to pieces as readily as though he were some cringing wretch in a far-flung system who had never so much as _dreamt_ of the sickening, slithering, insidious tendrils of the Force. She had probably heard every desperate echo of his thoughts, dipping the cool, calm reach of her power, still and steady and held close to herself where Ren’s had raged a red-tinged torrent, into where the ragged edges of Hux’s mind were standing open like a flesh wound.

He expected her to mock him. She didn’t. Instead, the edges of her mouth lifted into a slight but almost piercingly uncomplicated smile.

“General,” she said. “It’s very late. Are you well?”

He noticed that her eyeline moved briefly past him, into the cargo hold. No doubt wondering what he had been up to in there. Hux thought he might well wonder too. To his surprise, she didn’t demand he immediately account for himself, suspecting him bent on treachery at every turn. She merely shifted her gaze back onto his face, her eyes calm, questioning in a gentle, inquisitive sort of way.

Hux opened his mouth to answer her, found he quite simply had no means of explaining himself. What could he say to her – that he had been rendered nearly beside himself by the sight of Poe Dameron’s unclothed arms and had almost resorted to getting himself off in the cargo hold like a frustrated teenager? He could feel his face prickling with the heat of a blush and thought what an infinite mercy it would be for whatever cruel and impervious intelligence governed the shiftless waves of the galaxy to strike him senseless at that very moment.

But because she seemed to possess an apparently infinite capacity for surprising him, the Jedi did not press him for an answer. Instead, she began to move past him, and for a moment he was sure she was going to put her hand on his arm, and he froze beneath the terrible expectation of it because he knew if someone touched him right now he would go mad. But she simply made that small, courteous gesture, as though asking him to accompany her.

“I found some tea,” she said; she gave a wry little half-smile, almost looking apologetic. “It’s not tarine but maybe we could try it and see what you think?”

Oh the straightforward _grace_ of the girl. He wanted to laugh, just as easily wanted to weep: did neither.

~

“It’s _sweet_ ,” he said.

He hadn’t quite been able to keep the distaste out of his voice, and hadn’t quite intended it anyway. The tea was palest amber and floral-scented, tickling Hux’s nose when he breathed in the steam before taking his first scalding sip. It immediately deluged his taste-buds with a kind of honey-drenched perfume that made his salivary glands pinch and water flood his mouth in an unpleasant sort of way. Hux’s preferences had always verged towards the bitter, the sour: the darker the flavour the better. It was why he liked tarine so much, its pungent base notes uplifting the subtler smoky contra-tones that most people mistook for acridity when in fact, if brewed correctly, it could be as complex and delicate a flavour as the finest Coruscanti wine. That was the issue of course: hardly anyone had the knowledge or patience to steep the stuff properly. Hux was something of an expert in the matter; the leaf had to be loose, air-dried until it was just a shade away from pure indigo, plunged into fresh-boiled water and left to mull for five minutes: no more, no less. The result was, in his view, nothing short of perfection.

This was – an _abomination_.

The Jedi nodded; she seemed pleased with herself. “It’s extracted from balmgrass. They grow it on Chandrila. I imagine it’s quite different to tarine. What do you think?”

Hux tried to school his features as the fragrant scent of the tea clung cloyingly to his palate, but he could feel the edges of his mouth turning down almost irresistibly. He looked at the little cup he was holding primly between his hands; the handle had clearly been broken off and reattached several times: there was a heavy gauze of glue skeining the edges of where the break was still visible, and he ran his thumb against the inexpert, homemade shape of it, half-wondering at the little bruise of tenderness that saw an object broken so frequently, and always put back together again.

Across the narrow galley from him, the Jedi laughed. “You hate it, don’t you?”

His first instinct was to bite, acidly, that it would be difficult for anyone with a half-educated sense of taste not to, but something stilled his tongue. The Jedi’s expression was mildly satirical, as though she fully expected him to respond to her in a cutting fashion. Hux swallowed a grimace; he would rather have drunk a mug of burnt caf to wash the revolting flavour away.

“It is not what I would – customarily have chosen,” he said thinly.

The Jedi said, “Yeah, it is pretty disgusting.”

He glanced up at her in surprise, caught her eye. She was still smiling, as though they were sharing some sort of private joke. Almost before he realised he was doing it, Hux felt the edges of his mouth lifting as well.

“I actually thought it might need sweetener in it before I tasted it,” she said. “I hear fancy Coruscant ladies drink it with _spoonfuls_ of honey.”

Hux sketched a theatrical shudder. “Stars forfend such an idea.”

“I know.” She gave her eyebrows a comedic little waggle, tipped the contents of her cup down the compactor. Hux hesitated before handing over his own cup; it seemed extravagantly wasteful to just throw it away, but the prospect of actually drinking the stuff was so repellent that it overcame any high-minded ideas he might have entertained about recycling.

“Did you keep any tarine in your quarters?” the Jedi said once she had disposed of Hux’s tea. “Maybe when we get to the _Finalizer_ , we can do a bit of shopping for you.”

She had clearly meant it in a light-hearted way, but the invocation of the ship’s name cut through him in a clean, cold sweep. Hux felt the faint warmth of good humour that had been kindling inside him dissolve in a flash; it had been the first time that he had almost, almost forgotten why they were here, and the reminder was distinctly unpleasant, needling at him in a way that left him feeling exposed and prickly. He turned away from her slightly in case his expression betrayed him, trying to configure a response that wouldn’t be too transparently pain-filled.

Her next words unbalanced him as efficiently as though she had swept a leg beneath his feet. “I’m sorry.” Her voice was practical. “I think that was insensitive of me. I wasn’t intending to make light of your loss.”

“My _loss_?” Hux said, disbelieving, turning back to look at her again. The Jedi was leaning against the compactor, her legs stretched out in front of her, her ankles crossed. She gave a single nod.

“Yes. I’m aware this mission has a lot of emotional – ” He saw her cast briefly for the right word – “Complexity, I suppose, for you. Whatever the people on you crew may have done, they were still your crew, your people. You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t feel something.”

Ah yes, that boundless Resistance generosity: contemplating the prospect of him even _being_ human. Hux ruminated on this bitterly for a moment, before he said, “I would have thought it rather easier for you to imagine me a monster.”

“Oh, we do.” She said it matter-of-factly, her voice devoid of accusation and apology both. “And you are. A monster, I mean. But I also know that’s not all you are. It’s possible for a person to do monstrous things and to still be a person at the end of it. I probably wouldn’t have thought that a year ago, or less. But Leia has taught me a lot of things.” She paused, for the first time seeming unsure of herself, almost embarrassed. “She doesn’t believe in giving up. On anything. Or anyone.”

Under ordinary circumstances Hux would have been outraged, hot with indignation, to be spoken to in such a way, _lectured_ even, by a chit of a girl almost half his age. But somehow, under the searching, earnest weight of her gaze, with the taste of Chandrilan flowers still in his mouth and the memory of the scent of Dameron’s hair still in his nostrils, he was finding it difficult to feel any of that. What he felt, instead, was sad, sad in a way that he hadn’t felt for years; he ached with it, this sadness, a yearning, pulling, bone-deep ache that he could no more articulate to himself than he could have explained to anyone else.

When the Jedi spoke again, her voice still had that note of hesitancy that seemed somehow uncharacteristic of her. “There was something else I’ve been wanting to talk to you about.” She was looking down at the floor now, and she chewed her lip before continuing. “About Kylo Ren.”

Hux looked away, his jaw working. He supposed it had only been a matter of time before _that_ particular subject came up, but it didn’t make it any easier.

When he didn’t reply, the Jedi went on. “I think you and I are the two people who were _closest_ to him towards the end – ” she emphasised the word with a little grimace to indicate she knew very well it was the wrong one to use entirely – “And because we have that in common – ” She paused. Hux did look at her then.

“Because?” he prompted, his voice a little ragged. The sound of Ren’s name had set a spike of adrenaline roiling through his veins, a well-learned fear response that Hux was utterly incapable of controlling.

The Jedi met his gaze, held it. Her expression was open, solemn, a little lost; she looked, in that moment, so much less than her already painfully young years. Hux realised that he couldn’t recall her name. His mind whirred quickly through possibilities – it was monosyllabic and plain: he knew that much. What had Dameron called her? _This is your ship, is it not? Well, I mean, it’s_ – Rey’s. _Rey_.

The Jedi – Rey – said, “How did you get over him being in your head?”

 _Oh_. He almost wanted to laugh. Perhaps if he liked her less – because he unaccountably found that he _did_ like her, and more, that he admired her – he would have laughed, simply to be cruel, because there _was_ no getting over that kind of thing, and the heart-splitting innocence of her question made Hux realise he was seeing her true for perhaps the first time, as the light shone through her: a child who had never been a child, just as he had never been a child. He imagined her for a moment, shaped and perfected by the Order, that cool intelligence and self-possession holding her straight like the calm, poised, young limb of a greater tree that stretched above her and around her, both augmented by and strengthening her own power. A shining, sharpened tribute to the Order’s capacity to form the foundling unwanted into something meaningful: terrible, unstoppable – _abhorrent_.

Hux swallowed, took a breath; began to speak.

“When Supreme Leader Snoke was still alive, he forbade Ren from attempting to read my thoughts. I presume he thought it would compromise the both of us – Ren was wont to become distracted by his own personal motivations, and I think Snoke _suspected_ that my ability to function as an officer would not necessarily be best served by having Ren’s teeth constantly at my ear.” He saw Rey smile a little at that, rueful. “After Snoke’s death, however, when Ren seized leadership – ” He stopped; the words suddenly felt like jagged shards of glass in his mouth. He made himself silently count to five, gathered himself very carefully together again. He cleared his throat. “Once Ren was Supreme Leader, there was never a moment when he was _not_ in my head.”

“I’m sorry.”

He looked at her in astonishment. “Whatever have _you_ to be sorry for?”

The look in her eyes was fierce, emphatic, as though she had come to some sort of revelation that she was bent with all her deadly might on making him see as well. “I’m sorry that he did that to you. I’m sorry that I was party to creating the situation where he _could_ do that to you.”

Hux gave a mirthless little bark of laughter. “Please don’t labour under the misapprehension that Snoke was in any way a _protector_ of mine. His death merely meant that I exchanged one torment for another.”

A frown made two small, thin lines appear between her dark brows. Her gaze had slid very slightly past him as she seemed to peer back into a memory, and he could almost track the pathway she worked through it as a muscle shifted beneath her cheek and her lips moved, soundlessly, once, as though repeating her side of a remembered conversation. He was quite content to let the silence stretch on when she said, “After that first time – I used to worry that I’d slip up, that I’d let my guard down when I was thinking about some important bit of intel and he’d be listening. Other times I used to think I could use our – connection, I suppose, to sway him back to the light.”

He didn’t want to listen to this. He didn’t want to hear about Ren’s repellent, unearned hagiography as a tragic hero who had clawed his way back to the side of all that was _good_ , and _pure_ , and _true_ , when Hux still had a little less than half the full mobility of his right shoulder back after Ren had dislocated it for him against that control console, and when he still found himself torn from sleep with the ghost of Ren’s Force grip at his throat as Hux gasped for air and tears stood in his eyes, the memory of Ren’s presence in his mind like a violation that never ended, but simply looped back on itself and carried on with the terrible inevitability of a nightmare where you struggle to find an escape from a blank-walled prison but every door opens on the same room.

He didn’t want to hear any of it from the mouth of this intelligent, far-sighted young woman who had the right to so much more.

“I understand that he – _aided_ you in the final battle.” He hadn’t intended it to come out sounding quite so resentful, but Rey didn’t seem to notice, or if she did, she made no indication of minding.

“Yes. I owe him my life.” She said it simply, stating a fact. “But the end of it – finishing things with Palpatine – that was my doing. I know that now. Ben’s sacrifice doesn’t absolve him of what Kylo Ren did.”

He felt, then, the strangest and most poignant sort of pride in her, seeing how she stood there in the knowledge of her own strength, her own worth, her eyes clear and her back straight. That archaic, haunted mansion of shuttered up skeletons the Jedi Order deserved her not a single whit.

“Do you think now that he’s gone, you’ll be able to find some sort of peace?”

Hux didn’t look at her as he tried to formulate a reply: he couldn’t. What in all the stars could such a thing even mean? _Peace_. He didn’t know if he understood the term. He didn’t know if he would deserve it, even if he did.

“We must all learn to live in a new world,” he said at last, once he was sure he could trust his voice. Rey nodded, her gaze once again hanging somewhere far distant, focused with the white heat of a star.

“Maybe we can make it a better one.”

Better? Well. He supposed it would have to be something, at least.


	8. The Finalizer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> more technobabble nonsense from me here, because while hux is an engineering genius, i definitely am not. i'm also not entirely sure if it's canon or fanon that hux developed the whisper class TIE fighter, but i really like the idea so just pretty much leant into it. thank you so much for reading, guys -- literally every comment is a treasure <3

As it turned out, Hux’s mysterious ‘calculations’ had proved spookily accurate: within just over another half cycle, the _Falcon_ crested the edge of Exegol space.

The dead Sith planet lay wreathed in red gas and dust particles, the remnants of the ancient corpses of space-faring megafauna that once swam through the stars here like great-lunged fish drawing shoals of nebula through their teeth like krill. At this proximity, the enormous static discharges emanating from the planet’s surface were not visible, but the _Falcon_ ’s sensors ran red as they struggled to parse the readings. Poe didn’t like how much the static was obscuring the wider view of the sensors; this close to Exegol, the radar was almost swamped by one single, hectoring read-out, and attempting to blip beyond the electrical storm was virtually impossible.

Another problem presented itself almost immediately. The _Finalizer_ wasn’t where they had left it. A vessel of that size wasn’t likely to be subject to too much tidal drift, but Poe had already suspected it was caught in Exegol’s gravitational orbit and the possibility that the desert planet had simply dragged the _Finalizer_ down onto its surface was a prospect that he now cursed himself for not seriously considering earlier.

“Take us in for another pass,” Rey said to Chewie. “A few clicks closer.” Chewie had the pilot’s chair while Rey leant over Poe’s shoulder to look at the navigational holo, both their faces bathed in blue light. Exegol’s surface flickered grainily on the screen, far below them.

“It’s gone,” Finn said, a note of finality in his voice.

Poe shook his head, even as doubt rolled in his stomach. “It can’t have just disappeared. Worst case scenario is the planet’s sucked it down to surface level.” He was almost impressed by how confident he sounded.

Rose said, “Those codes aren’t going to be much use then.”

“That’s not entirely true.” Almost as one, every head in the cockpit turned to look at Hux. An irritable little twitch ran through his features at the sudden attention, his mouth pinching fussily. He lifted his chin. “The codes will at least allow us to _track_ the ship, once we are within close enough proximity to it. Even if it has indeed been grounded, it may be possible to engage the engines long enough to create a traceable energy signature.”

It was the most he had spoken in front of the whole group since they left Jint, and with every word Poe could see a blush pinkening Hux’s magnolia blossom skin. He blushed in a peculiar, finicky sort of way: high on the slant of his cheekbones, across the edge of his jaw, along the shell of his ears and at the tip of his nose. It made him look petulant and fragile, all pink and white like an albino rabbit. It made Poe want to cup Hux’s face in his hands and smother it with kisses until he gasped.

Okay, _not_ the time, Dameron.

“It’s a good call, if he’s right – ” Poe began, looking at Rey, to which Hux cut across indignantly, “I _am_ right.” Poe grinned, making a little placating gesture.

“I got the memo, Hugs – it’s your ship. But we’ve still got to find it first.”

“I can’t believe you didn’t take note of the correct coordinates on your _initial_ reconnaissance.”

“These _are_ the coordinates. We are _at_ them. We couldn’t be any _more_ at them if we were sat on top of the ship.”

“Well, _clearly_ someone didn’t note them down properly.”

“Relax, princess, I know you think about me a lot, but Finn was there too.”

“Leave me out of this,” Finn said, at the same time as Hux began to splutter “You _insolent_ – ” and Chewie roared an approximation of “Would you two give it a rest?” from the pilot’s seat. Poe looked back at Rey, still grinning, just in time to see her roll her eyes. Her expression was tolerant, affectionate.

“I’m going to try the long-range scanner again,” she said, keying in a bypass code. The scanner chattered busily to itself as it ran projection after projection, each one coming back fruitless. There was a small, inconsequential moon about a dozen clicks away from their location, a gnarly patch of astral debris somewhere below them – but no ship of any discernible profile, no _Finalizer_. No IFF.

Poe breathed out. Behind him, he heard Rose tapping away at a datapad, inputting their location, the proximity of the _Falcon_ to Exegol, the stress it was exerting on the _Falcon_ ’s engines to be this close to the planet’s bizarre, noxious atmosphere. Had he just landed them all in a boiling pot, and to no end?

“So we gonna use these codes or what?” Finn said. Once more, five heads turned in nearly perfect unison to look at Hux. BB-8 rolled on their axis to make a similar gesture towards him, chirping inquisitively. Poe was impressed by how convincingly Hux managed to glare at the lot of them almost as one.

“Well.” Hux sniffed jerkily, giving his head a proud, defensive little toss. “I suppose that’s what we are _here_ for. Does this barely flight-worthy heap of spare parts have a serviceable engineering station, or am I expected to perform a miracle?”

~

“Is there a single piece of tech on this ship that isn’t exorbitantly out of date?”

Poe smiled at Hux’s tone. He had sounded, almost, bewildered rather than sneering, as though his disbelief were genuine and the question honest, originating from a peculiar sort of innocence at the possibility that some ships had to make do and mend with minimal resources. Not everyone had the mysterious and largely unspecified funding capacity of the First Order, after all.

“Is that your way of telling me you don’t know how to use it?” Poe moved so that he was propping one shoulder against the durasteel of the bulkhead door; he was being careful not to crowd Hux against the engineering station, aware that the nearest exist out of the space was directly behind Poe and Hux would have to go around him to reach it. He knew, somehow, that having a clear line of sight to the exit would be important to Hux, as would being able to reach that exit without hindrance.

“Of course not.” Hux rested a gloved hand against the sensor that controlled the holographic interface; he made a slight, gauging gesture with two fingers, before a visual of the _Falcon_ ’s navigational system popped up. The lines of Hux’s face were rendered soft in the hazy blue light, and for a moment his expression relaxed into something resembling a calm, clear focus, his eyes alert, his lips parting. Poe watched him, drinking in the fleeting, fragile privilege of being _able_ to watch him in a moment that seemed supremely unguarded. It elicited in Poe the strangest tug of wistfulness beneath his heart; sometimes he felt like he was seeing Hux as he could have been, a parallel figure drawn from the depths of some distant other world that would shiver and dissolve the moment Poe touched him.

He could see Hux highlighting one of the command modules that controlled the _Falcon_ ’s radar dish, and Poe did move closer then, partly from curiosity, partly from suspicion.

“You uh, want to explain what you’re doing there, Hugs?”

Hux smoothly sidestepped out of Poe’s proximity, without taking his hand away from the console or his eyes off the display. “Corellian engineering is excessively backward,” he said, “but that may actually prove useful here. Your ship’s radar dish is not protocol-locked – that means it’s broadcasting our location to any passing vessel with a half-wit’s understanding of how to bypass standard encryption. However.” He gave Poe a small, gimlet, sideways smile, looking enormously pleased with himself. “We may use this to our advantage.”

“Oh yeah?” Poe frowned, watching with a rising sense of unease as Hux’s hand moved to toggle the heads-up display that showed what channels the radar dish was currently cycling through. One of them looked oddly familiar –

“Hey – _wait_.” Poe acted before his brain quite caught up with him, one arm flying out to knock Hux’s hand away from the console, the other reaching for the blaster in his thigh holster. He closed the space between them in one step, jostling Hux backwards, Poe’s free hand now coming up to close around Hux’s wrist and twist his arm fully up behind him, leveraging him against the wall. This close to Hux, he felt rather than heard the other man take a hiss of breath through his clenched teeth, his eyes briefly closing in a single, hard blink.

“You were just gonna – open our broadcast channel, flag our position up?” Poe could hear how his own voice grated across his vocal chords. The sense of disappointment he felt was almost overwhelming – he had wanted to trust Hux, more than he now realised he had ever been able to admit to himself. _Had_ trusted him, on some level he couldn’t fully understand. Force _damn_ it – Poe knew he was an idiot when it came to a pretty face, but even he couldn’t quite believe how badly his head had been turned by this green-eyed, treacherous, slippery little fox.

“That channel you were about to connect to,” he said. “That’s the _Finalizer_ ’s channel. What were you trying to do, Hugs? Signal to some of your buddies that we were out here hanging bare-assed in space with our friggin _blinkers_ on? Is that what you were doing, huh?”

He couldn’t fail to notice beneath the stab of angry disappointment in his chest how Hux’s own body had gone very still beneath his hands, how he wasn’t even making an effort to wrest his arm out of Poe’s grip. The entire narrative currently being articulated by Hux’s body language was one of pliability, of _submission_ , and Poe suddenly felt sickened by how firmly he was pressing the muzzle of his blaster into Hux’s back. He deliberately relaxed the muscles in his arm a little, relenting the pressure of the gun.

When Hux spoke, he didn’t even turn his head to look at Poe. His face was very white. “That is the _Finalizer_ ’s channel,” he said, “because I just accessed it with the _Finalizer_ ’s command codes. As you asked me to do.”

Poe let go the breath he didn’t realise he had been holding. He was so close to Hux that he saw it stir his coppery hair where it had overgrown slightly at the nape of his neck. He felt Hux shiver against him. He was still not looking at Poe, his eyes wide and fixed at a distance somewhere just beyond the far edge of the engineering station, his pupils hugely dilated. It suddenly dawned on Poe with a cold shock of something like surprise, perhaps more like guilt, that Hux was completely terrified.

Poe relaxed his grip, uncurling his fingers from around Hux’s thin wrist. Very deliberately, taking care to signpost his movements, he stepped back away from Hux, holstering the blaster.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and then again, because it didn’t seem enough: “I’m – I’m sorry. I kinda – freaked out a little there.” Well _that_ was the understatement of the fucking century. He regarded Hux for a moment, feeling stupid and tongue-tied with shame. “Are you okay?”

At last Hux jerked his head round to look at him. The edges of his mouth were pulled down, quivering slightly, with disgust or contempt, or something else, Poe couldn’t quite discern.

“I’m fine,” he said, his voice even more clipped than usual. He made a small, stiff little gesture with the arm Poe had twisted, flexing the fingers of his hand. “Should I continue, or do you want to put me in shock cuffs first?” There was barely any venom in his voice. He almost couldn’t seem to muster the enthusiasm.

“No, no.” Poe closed his eyes, squeezing his hands into fists, hating himself. “Hux listen – I’m sorry. I mean it. It was just – the idea that we might be compromised out here, when we’ve basically left a treasure hunt back to the Resistance base behind us – I just – reacted, you know?” He saw Hux move his right arm again, rather gingerly, rolling his shoulder joint carefully in its socket. Guilt swelled in Poe’s throat. “Did I hurt you?”

Hux’s head moved dismissively. “It’s nothing. An old injury.” His nose wrinkled slightly, as though he were repelled by having to make the admission.

Poe moved towards him impulsively, froze when he saw the way Hux stiffened in response. He felt as though he had cornered a wild animal. “Seriously, if I’ve hurt you, let me help, yeah?” _I promise to protect you_. Stars, he’d barely managed to go half a standard day without fucking that up.

“Dameron, just – _drop it_.” Hux’s voice was rough – he didn’t seem to be able to meet Poe’s eyes. His hand began to move almost unconsciously towards his shoulder again, before he seemed to catch himself. His expression was hunted, evasive; he seemed to be having to make a conscious effort to control his breathing: he was making a very slight, stilted, hiccupping sound as he inhaled, the air quivering out in increments as he exhaled.

The idea that Poe had done this to him shamed him more than any guilt he had ever felt.

Finn’s expression was guarded when Poe and Hux returned, Rey’s carefully neutral. Rose had her chin rested in one hand and she met Poe’s gaze briefly, a small, querying furrow appearing between her eyebrows. Poe was aware that the atmosphere between him and Hux had changed noticeably, and that they had brought it with them, filling the corners of the cramped cockpit with the muted pulse of pain. He looked at Rey, who lifted her head, her eyes asking the question.

“We’ve found it,” Poe said.

~

The wreck of the _Finalizer_ hung several kilometres above the surface of Exegol. Contrary to Poe’s assumption (he was planning on swearing off assumptions for the foreseeable future), it had been subject to some minor drift in the astral tides that had tugged it askew of its previous location when he, Finn and Chewie had originally located it. Its vast, dagger-shaped silhouette loomed just beyond the edge of a shimmering, red-tinged nebula, and for a while everyone was silent as they gazed out of the viewpoint at it. It was visibly crippled, its starboard side almost entirely obliterated. Even from this distance Poe could see that scavengers had already been at work on the destroyer’s shell – abandoned salvage anchors drifted in the silent currents, hooked onto the _Finalizer_ ’s docking port.

Hux’s strategy for locating the _Finalizer_ had been strikingly economical. Just as the old Corellian radar dish was potentially allowing enemy ships to bypass its ropey encryption, this weakness simultaneously allowed for the _Falcon_ ’s broadcast channel to latch onto and piggyback off any intercepting radio-waves. Once he had input the _Finalizer_ ’s command codes, its location had flashed up on the HUD like a beacon. It had led them straight to it. Hux had closed down the channel the moment they had the _Finalizer_ located, sealing it with a temporary encryption key that would prevent any unknown vessels from locking onto their position. Poe watched him work with a combination of admiration, lingering guilt – and utterly unresolved lust. _Damn_ , Hux being capable like this was fucking sexy. He had a way of drawing his lower lip between his teeth when he was concentrating, his eyes narrowing and focusing in a way that made Poe wonder what he would look like concentrating like that on _other_ things… Poe consciously made himself halt that train of thought; he’d pretty much cashed in his right to fantasise about Hux when he’d pushed him against a wall – and not in a hot way.

“We gonna go for it?” Finn said.

“I think we need to be careful.” Rose was leaning against the back of the co-pilot’s chair, her gaze, like everyone else’s, focused on the distant, hulking outline of the star destroyer. “I intercepted a bit of comm chatter before from a Twi’lek patrol cruiser that came this way about two cycles ago. They seemed to have a run in with an unknown vessel. I don’t know if they managed to access the identity of the ship, but whatever it was, it seemed to rattle them.”

“Do you think it could have been a salvage ship?” Poe said. “I mean, they can be pretty aggressive when it comes to protecting their finds.”

Rose shook her head. “How many salvage ships do you know that pack enough firepower to take out a patrol cruiser’s main gun?”

 _Shit_. Poe looked at Rey; she lifted her eyebrows at him, but he could see her mind working furiously. Glancing away, he looked across at Hux who was on the other side of him. Hux’s gaze was focused on the _Finalizer_ , his expression intent, unreadable. He was leaning forward ever so slightly in the nav seat. Poe watched him in profile for a moment, the sharp, straight line of his nose, where the light caught the edges of his pale gold eyelashes.

Rey said, “Any sign that this mystery ship is still in the region?”

Rose shook her head again. “Nope. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not still knocking about. The Twi’leks seemed to think it just popped onto their radar out of thin air. Looks like it had some hefty stealth protocols.”

“It may have belonged to the Order.” At the sound of Hux’s voice, everyone looked across at him. He briefly met Poe’s gaze, glanced away again. “The last starfighter I designed for Ren was an elite modified TIE interceptor. It was a prototype, brought up to Ren’s exact specifications, but it never finished development because – well.” His mouth quirked humourlessly, then he went on, his voice sharpening as though growing impatient with himself: “My point is that the whisper had the capability to shift in and out of stealth protocols without registering on sensors. That was virtually the whole point of it.”

“Just how many of these things were built?” Poe said.

“One. Ren insisted on rushing development so he could use it to locate that absurd Sith relic of his. His was the only fully functional interceptor to be processed.”

“ _Was_ ,” Rey echoed. “I took Ren’s TIE fighter after I fought him on Pasaana. I destroyed it on Ahch-To.”

Hux looked almost impressed. “Well then,” he said silkily. “That eliminates _my_ hypothesis at least.”

“And there’s no way any more of these starfighters were built without you knowing?” Finn said. “I mean, it’s not like you had top level security clearance at the end.”

Hux’s upper lip curled slightly. “I assure you that I knew precisely what was happening to _my_ prototype.”

“If you say so.” Finn folded his arms, leaning his weight back against the wall of the cockpit. “So what’s the plan? Okay, the Twi’leks had their asses handed to them, but there’s no reason why this ship should still be hanging around. It’s not like anyone knew we were coming. I say we just go ahead with what we’d already decided.”

“I agree,” Poe said. “We don't have much choice in the matter anyway, apart from just turning around and going home.”

There was a small, reluctant silence. No one wanted to return to the Resistance base empty-handed. Poe knew there would be no judgment from Leia if safety of the crew had been their main concern, but he couldn’t stand the idea of seeing disappointment in her eyes. Not again.

He looked over at Rey. “Well, boss – it’s your call. Just say the word and Finn and I’ll get the escape shuttle primed.”

Rey nodded very slightly, her jaw set. “We’ll proceed with the plan," she said. "Small ground crew, Chewie and BB-8 remain on the _Falcon_. No unnecessary risks. I’m pulling us all out of this alive.”

In his peripheral vision, Poe saw Hux turn his head to look at Rey. When he felt Poe’s eyes on him, his gaze slid past her and onto Poe. For a moment, they looked at each other in silence.

“You ready for this, Hugs?” Poe said, trying for a levity he didn’t much feel.

To his surprise, Hux smirked, looking for a brief moment genuinely amused. “Just as long as you keep your blaster holstered, Dameron, I’m quite sure I’ll manage.”

Poe laughed, felt something loosen in his chest. “You know me, baby. Always keep the safety on.”


	9. Ghost in the Machine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope everyone is managing to stay as safe and well as possible during quarantine. i know from personal experience that this kind of situation can have an enormous impact on mental health and wellness in general, so just wanted to send a whole load of love and positive thoughts out there to everyone. i have a tumblr @mslollywillowes and please feel free to come and chat to me if you're feeling anxious or scared or lonely, or just want to chat about our lovely gingerpilot boys. i don't think you need to follow me to send me a message, so do drop me a line if you need a listening ear.
> 
> in this chapter: complete nonsense engineered solely to get poe and hux actually TOUCHING (le gasp!) and then it all nosedives off the angst gangplank, ah well.
> 
> mild trigger warning for discussion of death and dead bodies in this chapter.

Hux said, “No.”

Poe had been expecting this. “It’s okay, Hugs, you don’t need to sit on my lap.”

“That’s hardly a consolation.”

Poe resisted the urge to make a joke. Hux’s posture radiated discomfort, his shoulders held very far back, his hands fidgeting restively where he clasped them together. Poe wanted to place his hand on the small flex in Hux’s lower back where he seemed to be holding most of his tension, spread his fingers, feel the subtle motions of Hux’s body beneath them. He resisted this too. Instead, he squatted down next to the open hatch on the escape shuttle and looked up at Hux.

“Come here, I’ll show you how we’ll do this.”

The _Falcon_ ’s escape shuttle wasn’t exactly built for five passengers – it was barely built for three. The little vessel piloted itself virtually on auto; once at the controls, Rey would plug in the proximity of their destination and the bare-bones AI would take over, leaving her to simply manipulate the yoke on occasion to correct for drift. Finn and Rose were going to cram into the two ejector seats behind her, leaving Poe and Hux to the single bucket seat at the rear. With a bit of manoeuvring they would be able to fit them both if one half-lay on the floor between the other’s legs like kids riding a toboggan. From his upwards-angled perspective, Poe ran his gaze appraisingly up the length of Hux’s body.

“How tall are you? Six, six-one-ish?”

Hux’s expression shifted into something like a sneer, then again into more like a grimace. “Thereabouts.”

“Your legs are longer than mine, I think.” Poe jumped up again, making to move towards him. Hux took a step back. It was a pointed gesture rather than a fearful one, a clear reminder to Poe to keep his distance. Poe reclosed the space between them, pointed too, but gentle, careful, keeping the palms of his hands turned slightly outward, signalling his intention to not cause harm. This exercise was purely academic (that’s what he told himself anyway); he estimated that Hux had a good five or so inches on him: at this proximity, Poe found himself having to look up slightly to make eye contact with him. He took a moment to appreciate just how _different_ Hux’s body was to his own; where Poe was compact, sturdy, hard-muscled, Hux was long, fine-edged, tapered. Poe thought he could pick him up if he wanted to. Wanted to.

Hux watched him closely, his eyes wary, taking in Poe’s every movement. “What are you doing?” he said.

Poe gave him a lopsided grin, meaning it in apology. “I’m not gonna arm-bar you again. Is this okay?” He asked the question with his eyes and his body language as much as his voice, making sure Hux noticed him lifting his hands, moving them towards him. Hux looked down, following the motion. To Poe’s almost inexplicable, wondering delight, Hux didn’t move or make to pull away this time, his expression guarded but almost curious, as Poe clasped him very gently by the elbows, holding them together so their bodies were not quite flush but perfectly level, the tips of his boot toes just touching the tips of Hux’s, the sharp jut of Hux’s elbows resting neatly, comfortably, in the palms of his hands.

“This feels nice,” Poe said, without thinking.

Hux blinked. His eyes had gone a little glassy. He had hunched his shoulders a little at Poe’s touch and was holding his arms in a slightly awkward, artificial angle as they rested in Poe’s grasp. At some point which Poe hadn’t noticed, he had unclasped his hands from behind his back and they were moving restively at his sides like dying, black-clad birds, a subtle indicator of some psychic distress. Hux – _spoke_ with his hands, Poe suddenly realised with that same bloom of marvelling pleasure; that was why he kept them so tightly clasped, so firmly out of sight. His hands gave him away, clenching or trembling or fluttering as his emotions governed – Poe imagined what Hux’s hands looked like without his gloves, pale and soft from being always enclosed in leather, but long-fingered, strong, capable. Speaking, eloquent hands, hands that could describe the emotional pull of a piece of music as readily as they could mend a transmitter.

“Is this okay?” he said, again, his voice urging, raw-soft.

“What are you doing?” Hux whispered, echoing himself too.

The tension between them was suddenly too taut, too thick, too heavy with impossibility, and it was Poe who stepped away this time. Hux’s hands hung empty, grasping, for a moment, his arms still in that awkward little bend where Poe had held them, before he clenched his fingers into fists again and his posture straightened, his hands moving seemingly unconsciously back into their usual position.

Poe swallowed, coughed; he carded his hand back through his hair, equally unconsciously, but caught himself doing it at the last moment – caught Hux looking at him with an open, almost slack sort of need in his face, following the motion of Poe’s hand as he raked back his curls and let them spring forward again, crowding onto his brow.

“Yeah,” Poe said, as breathless as though he had run the length of a star destroyer. “Thought so. You’re taller than me but your height’s all in your legs.”

Hux closed his mouth, which had been just slightly open. He looked as though he had been dunked in cold water and slapped across the face, the latter quite before he had had time to catch his breath from the former. There was a crease between his brows, two spots of colour burning high in his cheeks. “What were you _doing_?” he insisted again, the scrape of his voice almost despairing.

Poe grinned, couldn’t help himself. “Think I’ll fit between your legs very nicely, Hugs.”

~

The _Finalizer_ ’s wrecked starboard side bled silently into the vacuum of space. From the shuttle’s tiny viewpoint, Poe watched debris twist and glide around the empty gash where it had initially haemorrhaged, the wound in the ship’s side an ugly twist of durasteel like the broken ribs on the skeleton of some vast star-swimming beast. He could just discern the flickering blue sheen where the automatic shields had sprung up to seal the destroyed section from the rest of the ship. The readings Rose had managed to take so far indicated that both oxygen and gravity levels were holding steady onboard, but even from this distance they could see that most of the _Finalizer_ ’s own escape shuttles were missing. Some of the crew must have managed to abandon ship when it became obvious the First Order had lost.

Forgetting himself, Poe tried to sit up to get a better view, bumped his head on the low roof above him.

“Be _careful_ ,” Hux hissed from behind him. Poe turned his head, trying to grin up at him. He couldn’t see Hux’s face from this angle, but he could imagine his disapproving expression well enough, those little lines at the edges of his mouth, the indignant flare of his nostrils. It was pretty cosy nestling between Hux’s thighs like this, though Poe had to be careful not to lean back too much or he would end up resting his head on Hux’s crotch. That – wasn’t a displeasing idea to Poe, but he didn’t think Hux would be exactly impressed. He was twitching and jerking at Poe’s every movement, sighing dramatically in a long-suffering sort of way when Poe shifted position to try and give himself more room. Admittedly Hux was probably pretty uncomfortable too, his long, rangy legs bent awkwardly at the knees to accommodate Poe. Poe could hear the leather of his boots creaking with every motion. He guessed that this entire situation probably rated somewhere up there in Hux’s top five worst nightmares, but hey everyone was having to make sacrifices today.

The auto-pilot took them in slowly, the shuttle juddering in a mildly nauseating way as it penetrated the _Finalizer_ ’s accretion disk. Rey had to wrestle with the yoke a little to keep them from overshooting as the artificial gravity took hold, steering them into the cavernous yawn of the still largely intact hangar bay. The landing jolted all of them violently, and Poe felt Hux put his hand on Poe’s shoulder to brace himself, take it away again immediately.

They left the escape shuttle smoking slightly in the hangar. Rey and Finn managed to extinguish the small fire that had broken out in the engine, but everyone agreed the chances of using the shuttle to return to the _Falcon_ were looking slim. Chewie was going to have to pull off a pretty nifty extraction, Poe thought ruefully. He looked out towards the open mouth of the hangar where the shields glimmered and shifted like reflected water. This was feeling more and more like a suicide run at every turn. Turned out he didn’t much like this ground crew business; there was something distinctly unnatural about a pilot having to rely on someone else behind the controls to get the job done.

Rose jimmied open the panel on the nearest elevator, did something to the amalgam of wires inside. Slamming the panel shut again, she turned to the others, her expression vivid. “This one’s still got power. I’ve rerouted its backup generator so we should be able to use it to get back.”

“Come on,” said Rey.

~

The corridors of the _Finalizer_ were eerily, unnaturally quiet.

The emergency power seemed to be cooperating to a satisfactory degree, bathing everything in a dim red light that made the headache forming behind Hux’s eyes spike in intensity. He hung back slightly from the others once they reached the main thoroughfare, trying to breathe through a sudden deluge of undignified panic. There was something tugging deep in his chest that was frantically trying to fly free, and which he quite desperately knew he had to push down and stifle with every fibre of his self-control, else he would lose himself entirely.

 _Breathe. Breathe._ He made himself count, very slowly, all the way to ten, holding each number in his head with every draw of breath as the air seemed to parse through his lungs like they were tissue paper. For a moment he felt the hot pressure of tears behind his eyes, as he always did when he found himself subject to these absurd little fits, sank his teeth into his inner cheek hard enough to feel the soft crunch of flesh yielding, the warmth of blood in his mouth.

Ahead of him, it was Rey who turned to look back. She had paused by one of the flickering door consoles to run her hand across it – possibly she could sense some sort of derelict memory here, could visualise the last moments of the _Finalizer_ ’s occupants through some impression they had left in the Force. Her dark eyes settled on Hux; her expression was grim with concentration, her mouth set in a firm line, and it didn’t alter as she looked at him. Instead, she wordlessly indicated the panel with her hand, asking him to join her in inspecting it. For a moment he felt an almost overwhelming sense of gratitude to her, for her absence of pity or censure.

“What sort of security access did your soldiers have, general?” she asked once he was by her side. Hux looked at her, questioning, then at the console. A blinking light near the bottom of it indicated the room beyond (a simple storeroom, as far as Hux could recall) was locked from within.

Dameron was suddenly at his elbow too. Hux tensed slightly but experienced no genuine urge to pull away. It felt strange to be surrounded like this on both sides by Resistance members and to feel so – _included_ , so inextricably bound up in the currency of their lives. He was unsure if it was revulsion that he felt at the concept – or relief.

“Can you open it?” Rey said to him, her voice very low.

“Yes.” His arm jostled against Dameron’s as he reached to tap at the console, keying in the override code. It took him two attempts to get it right because his hand was shaking (something else for which he was gratified to Rey, and to Dameron for that matter, for ignoring), but on the second go the door gave an acknowledging chime and the console flashed green.

The sweet-sick odour of death assaulted them the moment the door slid open. Behind them, Hux heard Tico whisper, “ _Oh no_ ”, at the same time as FN-2187 said, “ _Shit_.” For a moment Hux had to pinch his nostrils to keep the smell from overwhelming him, while beside him Dameron gagged and turned away, reaching blindly for the wall. Only Rey remained still, her expression fierce. Moving very deliberately, she pulled her blaster from her belt and went forward into the room.

There were three bodies, all wearing First Order uniforms. One was slumped nearest the door, his back propped against the wall and his knees pulled up to his chest. His head was inclined forward as though in sleep. A second, a girl who once must have looked around Rey’s age, was lying curled half on her side, her blonde hair falling across her face where it was tugged loose from a braid. It was coming away from her scalp, Hux noticed, feeling a renewed swell of nausea that made him press his hand over his mouth. The third, an older man, was lying on his back near the shelves. His eyes had collapsed in on themselves, the sockets now dark pits in his face.

Rey moved towards the girl, stooped over her. She used the barrel of her blaster to tug the collar of the girl’s uniform away from her neck, the motion as gentle as though the girl on the floor were a sleeping child. Rey remained in that posture for several seconds, her head lowered, her eyes on the dead woman. Then moving just as slowly, she lifted her blaster again and stepped across to where the older man lay. The same action, the same careful, cautious gesture, repeated finally with the young man by the wall.

“They have no injuries on them,” she said at last as they gathered together outside the room. She looked into each of their faces in turn, her gaze steady. Both Tico and the stormtrooper looked bewildered, heartsick, standing close together like children. There was a sheen of sweat on Dameron’s face and he kept fussing with his hair in a way that Hux was finding irritating rather than appealing at the moment. Rey held Hux’s gaze for a beat longer, and for the first time since knowing her he felt the faintest whisper of the Force against his mind, before she withdrew it again, just as carefully. He found himself utterly at a loss where he would ordinarily have frozen over in fury at such an invasion, precisely because it _hadn’t_ been. Rey’s brief presence in his mind had been polite, deliberate, as though she had _meant_ him to know that she was there. For the life of him Hux couldn’t work out why, and this unsettled him almost more than the brutal violation of Ren’s own mental assaults.

Rey went on: “I wondered maybe poison, but I don’t think so. They all show signs of severe dehydration. I’ve seen it before, on Jakku.”

Tico’s head moved in a reluctant negative, as though she could see the answer to a question she never wanted to ask. “What does that mean?”

“It means they died of thirst.” The stormtrooper’s voice was flat – _Finn_ , Hux reminded himself with some exasperation. Finn had a closed, teeming look in his eyes, as though a thousand different impulses were shifting beneath the hard surface that he was keeping painfully in check. He was looking and looking at Rey like he could somehow see what she was seeing if he looked hard enough, could peer through her eyes and find a perspective that somehow made sense again.

“Bad way to go,” Dameron said, a little roughly. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “D’you think someone locked them in?”

“They locked _themselves_ in,” Hux snapped. He was finding it hard to catch his breath again. There was a buzzing in his ears that he knew would threaten to engulf him if he didn’t get a hold on himself soon. He swallowed, tried to temper the shrill edge to his voice. “The magnetic lock couldn’t have been accessed from the outside. The passcode could only have been set by someone already _inside_ the room.”

“Hang on.” Dameron gave a humourless, resisting laugh. “What are you trying to say – that they just shut themselves in there to _die_?”

Silence as what seemed to be the unavoidable truth of this settled across them. Hux could hear Dameron breathing next to him.

Tico was the first to say what everyone was thinking. “But _why_?” She sounded almost close to tears.

Finn gave an angry little shrug. “Maybe they were scared of all those Sith ghosts flying around.”

Dameron erupted. “ _Seriously_ though?” It was the first time Hux had ever heard him raise his voice and he looked across at him, committing the erroneousness of it to memory. “What could seriously have made three people just decide to shut themselves in a room together to choke to death? Two of them are _kids_. And where’s everyone else while we’re on the subject? Not everyone was on those escape shuttles.” He broke off, breathing hard. He was scared, Hux realised, scared and upset in an inarticulate, jagged way that Hux could feel pulsing off him like body heat. It stirred within Hux a sensation that he couldn’t quite understand – a desire to _contain_ Dameron somehow, to put his hand on him in a way that would quiet him. Not unkindly though, not in the way Hux’s father had quieted the boy when he couldn’t smother his tears. He wanted to be _gentle_ with Dameron, and it was the strangest, most piercing feeling Hux had ever known.

Finn’s gaze was hard. “I don’t know, man. Maybe you should ask your little friend what he thinks?”

Dameron goggled rather stupidly at him for a moment, then glanced at Hux. “What – oh come _on_ , Finn. _Buddy_. Why would he have anything to do with this?”

“I’m not saying that,” Finn said, his voice overlapping with Hux’s as he snarled, “I am perfectly capable of speaking for myself, thank you.” Both Finn and Dameron ignored him, their eyes locked together.

“What are you saying then?” Dameron’s voice had dropped, but in its lower register he sounded harsher, dangerous somehow. “Hux hasn’t even _been_ on this ship for months. Or do you just think every terrible thing that happens round here is somehow his fault?”

Finn stared at him for a moment, that restive, wounded turmoil behind his eyes flickering briefly to the surface as his mouth worked and a muscle flexed and jumped in his jaw. “I don’t know, Poe,” he said again, and it seemed to require an extraordinary exertion of control for him to keep his voice level. “I would say he’s all maxed out at doing fucking terrible things. But you’re doing a really good job of defending him, that’s for sure.”

“Guys, can we not do this now – ?” Tico began, but Dameron was shaking his head. The same hurt in Finn’s eyes was reflected in his.

“Think what you want, Finn,” he said. “Think what you want.”

“We need to get moving,” Rey said, her voice quiet. She was looking at Finn with an expression that Hux couldn’t quite discern – something like the way one would look at a stranger who has spoken your name, both recognising and not recognising all at once.

As the group began to move, Hux found himself seeking out Dameron’s eyes even before he knew he was doing it. Dameron was staring down the corridor at Finn’s back, his brows pulled together, but when he felt Hux’s gaze on him he glanced across at him. Hux swallowed, felt the press of something hard, and hot, and dangerous to him rising in his throat.

Dameron held the look for a moment, then turned away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> poe being able to pick hux up is totally canon per THIS gif: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/351984527128442352/


	10. Ceremonials

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i hope everyone is still keeping safe and managing to cope ok. i think lockdown is giving my creativity a bit of a beating because i struggled like mad writing this chapter; i'm still not happy with it but wanted to get it out there. thank you so so much to everyone who is still reading (to regular guest commenter: happy birthday for last week!). i'm sorry i haven't been replying to individual comments recently; i'm in a bit of a weird headspace at the moment but wanted to emphasise that every bit of feedback is so incredibly valued.
> 
> anyway, not ending on a downer -- have some gingerpilot!

Sometimes she dreamt of a black throne.

In the dream, there is a sun that hangs low on a dark horizon. Clouds hurtle towards it like vigilant spectres, seeking a purpose that only her dream-self understands. Somewhere at the peak of a smoke-shrouded mountain, a presence waits, knowing, expecting her.

It is at this peak that she knows the throne sits. It is empty. It is waiting for her.

At the foot of the throne a figure stands, tall and straight and black-robed. In its hand is a lightsabre – double-ended like her old quarterstaff, its kyber crystal gleaming red. Power emanates from this solitary slender silhouette, the likes of which she has never imagined. And when the figure turns, as it always does, as is always the same in this dream, she knows what she will see – the figure has her face, and even though she only half-recognises the knowing smile on her own lips she knows the truth of it. The Dark calls to her, as it always has.

The _Finalizer_ bled it from every cold, pristine panel. Rey could feel it pressing at her in a way she couldn’t quite understand – here on the bridge in particular, the sense of the Dark overlay the open heartlines of a more mundane, everyday evil: the banal wickedness of a system that stole the brutalized, forgotten children of an unforgiving galaxy and crafted them into something worse. Over the top of this, the alien Dark pulsed like a living, restive palimpsest – Rey had a sense of some great and terrible power having recently hurtled through these empty corridors, something separate and entirely other to the dull-edged malice of the First Order. It beat against her skin like a sick heat. If she closed her eyes, even just briefly, she could sense the outlines of her crew against the darkness of her eyelids – Rose a clear, gold warmth, uncomplicated and loud in her vitality; Poe restless, surging, bright-edged, nipped here and there by an uncertain, searching pain; Finn very still, his presence in the Force muted to her like a wound that has scarred over but never fully healed.

If she strove further out, she could feel the edges of Hux’s presence too. His was less readily available to her simply because she was unaccustomed to seeking him out – but he was there in glimpses, sharp and jagged, his mind coldly luminous, orderly, but stitched through with a deep seam of hurt too stifled to articulate and a loneliness that she could feel him holding close to himself like it would protect him.

An infinitesimal shift in the Force. Beside her, Hux blinked, turned his head to look at her, his expression questioning, wary. Smoothly, leaving no trace, Rey mentally drew back from him again. The ripple in the Force abated.

It appeared that while scavengers had been making hay with the exterior of the ship, they had not yet ventured aboard. There were minor visible signs of the battle over Exegol, but everything seemed to be largely intact. No other bodies. It made Rey uneasy. Not everyone would have been able to abandon ship in the escape shuttles. Where _were_ they all?

They had left the corpses of the three Order soldiers laid out in a neat, compact row just outside the storeroom. Hux found a roll of chamois cloth in a weapons cleaning kit and Rey used her knife to cut it into portions so they could cover the soldiers’ faces with it. Hux had paused for a moment bent over the girl, her dogtags resting in his palm.

“I need to give them a proper burial.”

Finn said, “I thought the First Order just spaced their dead.”

“Of course not. We are not _heathens_ , as much as you may wish to imagine it so.”

“That’s what you did to your troopers.” Finn’s voice was flat. He was looking at Hux with a kind of disbelieving revulsion on his face. Hux turned his head slightly towards Finn, not quite looking at him.

“You may believe whatever you wish to believe. It is neither within my power nor my interest to attempt to make you think otherwise.”

“Guess that makes it easy for the both of us then,” Finn said. “I wouldn’t be interested in hearing it.”

Now Finn hung back by the entrance to the bridge while the others made their way inside. His proximity to the automatic sensor was making the door swish open and closed occasionally in a way that Rey was finding unsettling; the pall of silence that hung over the vast ship was so complete that she thought she could hear the rustling passage of blood through her own ears. Everyone was nervous, jumpy. She had noticed Poe disengaging the safety catch on his blaster. Rose’s hand kept moving to the outline of her own pistol beneath her jacket, as though to reassure herself that it was still there. Standing close to Hux at the console that housed the ship’s combat identification system, Rey could feel the quick, shallow motion of his breathing. His mouth was set in a sour little downturn of what looked like displeasure but which Rey was quickly growing to learn was in fact concentration, as he used his code cylinder to bring up the holographic interface and leant forward slightly so the biometric scanner could read his iris.

A crowded damage report filled the screen, automatically compiled by the ship’s artificial intelligence. Rey leant a little closer too, mustering her knowledge of old Imperial to parse what the report said. From what she could glean, the _Finalizer_ had experienced rapid uncontrolled decompression which, she assumed, had likely led to hypoxia killing everyone who had still been on board before the AI managed to re-stabilise internal pressure. It would have been quick, as easy as falling asleep. It still didn’t explain where all the bodies were.

“Maybe they managed to escape,” Poe said, sounding about as convinced by this hypothesis as Rey felt.

“Maybe,” she said. Hux made a small, dissatisfied sound.

“The system was accessed recently.”

Rey looked at him. “How recently?”

“Three cycles ago. Look.” He highlighted a section of the screen that showed the system’s login history. There were several botched attempts that almost resulted in the system locking down, before the entire infrastructure was hard overridden. Entire sections of the system history had been deleted.

“Wait.” Hux’s hands suddenly moved swiftly, tapping a command into the console. A holo of the ship’s internal system flashed up, blue-lit and marked out in blocks of red where parts of the system were offline. Both Rey and Poe looked from the holo, to Hux, back again.

“What’s wrong?” Poe said.

“The IFF.” Hux highlighted a section of the interface, pulled it up so that it filled the holo screen. “It’s _gone_.”

“But it’s a program,” Poe said. “Isn’t it embedded into the system?”

Hux gave him a slow look. “Yes. But the _system_ was accessed three cycles ago, and the IFF downloaded. It has been completely wiped.”

He gestured impatiently for Rey to look, stepping out of her way as she moved closer to the console. The system was strangely archaic, using a lot of old Imperial tech that Rey was familiar with from the rare occasions when she had found working circuit boards among the scrapyards of Jakku. She could see where the system had been initially accessed, at first remotely as though from a passing ship, then directly from the interface – the CID had been wiped in seemingly random places, in a way that suggested whoever had accessed it had been deliberately covering their tracks. And right where the identify friend foe programme should be, a blank red dot pulsed emptily on the screen.

At the back of Rey’s neck, with the subtle, atavistic precognition of a prey animal that knows its scent has carried on the wind to the den of an unknown predator, she felt the first stirring of awareness that they were in danger.

~

Finn said, “You know what happened to it.”

Hux was walking ahead and slightly to the left of him, and he turned to look back at Finn with an expression of almost amused incredulity on his face. “Should I be flattered that you seem to believe me possessed of a preternatural capacity for mischief, or are you simply that wilfully stupid?”

“Hey, look – ” Poe began, but Finn made a quieting gesture at him.

“I don’t need the Poe Dameron defence squad, okay? I know exactly what you’re capable of, _general_.” He made the word into an expletive. “The entire Hosnian System knows. I just think it’s pretty funny that the IFF program we could clearly detect when Poe and I scanned the ship on our recon barely a _week_ ago has now magically disappeared.”

Rey deliberately slowed her pace so that she could put herself in-between Hux and Finn. She didn’t think either of the two men noticed. There was a sparking, distressful energy reeling off Finn that she hadn’t felt before now. It made him strange, dangerous – hard to recognise.

“These insinuations are growing extremely tiresome,” Hux said. His voice had that raspy, slightly strident quality to it that always seemed to indicate when he was feeling especially cornered. The edges of his eyes were pink, had been ever since they discovered the bodies in the storeroom. “I would be grateful if you would at least be transparent as to what you’re accusing me of.”

“What – you want me to spell it out for you, Hux?” Finn did raise his voice then, and Rey stopped in front of him so he would have to as well. She held his gaze meaningfully. For a moment she wondered if she should reach to grip his hand. Couldn’t quite bring herself to.

“I suppose that’s what I am asking, yes,” Hux replied thinly. He had paused as well, and Poe had circled around him so he was standing near Hux’s shoulder. Rey saw Hux’s eyes flick to him briefly, back to Finn again.

Finn let out a breath. Dots of perspiration stood out on his upper lip. He seemed to be trying to hold himself together as much as Hux was. Rey could feel the Force thrumming like an exposed nerve ending between them, brittle with accusation and hurt.

“I think you’re trying to trick us,” Finn said at last. “I think you saw this whole thing as an opportunity for some last gasp vengeance before you while out the rest of your twisted, wicked little life doing whatever it is that failed tyrants do before they die. I think you’ve already turned Poe’s head, somehow.” He was looking past Hux now, directly at Poe, his face working. “But I think that’s because he’s _good_ , and _kind_ , and sees the damn _light_ in everyone no matter whether they deserve it or not. I think you don’t deserve it. I think you don’t deserve a single shred of the respect and dignity you’ve been shown by everyone here.”

Hux’s eyes glittered. For a moment he looked – frightening, every inch the ruthless, coldly insane general of a hundred propaganda vids. That strange, vivid softness Rey had encountered less than two nights ago when they had exchanged something akin to shared pain over Chandrilan tea – the uncertain vulnerability, the quiet voice and graceful manners of that man were like the memory of a ghost now, or something even less. The more Finn spoke, the more Hux’s mouth twitched and tightened into a vicious facsimile of a smile, his teeth showing. He was staring at Finn the way a feral dog stares at a raised hand: eager, snarling fangs, whites of the eyes gleaming, waiting for the first blow before he leapt for the throat. Rey found herself wondering which Hux was the real one.

“How very _perspicacious_ of you,” Hux sneered, still with that cruel, demented smirk on his face. “Such insight from an _ex_ -stormtrooper who barely even completed his basic training – ”

“That’s enough.” Poe’s voice was soft, firm. Hux jerked at the sound as though his entire focus had narrowed down to the sniper sights of Finn, and nothing else. He stepped away from Poe with a funny little twitch of his shoulders, a muscle jumping in his cheek.

“As you wish, _commander_.” His voice was silky soft, deadly, that mad gleam still burning in his eyes. Poe was staring at him. For a moment Rey was sure he was going to reach out to him, could feel the ache of yearning that he felt, but Hux was sweeping past him, the tails of his coat billowing in his wake, and Poe’s empty hand closed at his side.

~

The group was numb and muted with failure as they picked apart the medbay, salvaging as many supplies as they could. Rey found the familiarity of the work comforting. She showed Rose how to store packs of bacta gel in her sleeves, down the sides of her boots, rolling bandages and field kits and empty syringes into small bundles that could then be tied to her belt. She broke down pieces of larger medical equipment that couldn’t be transported wholesale, but which could be utilised elsewhere in bits, filling her and Poe’s satchels with it. Hux was surprisingly deft and industrious in assisting her, seeming to possess the same sort of instincts as Rey when it came to discerning which parts could be dismantled and which should be given over as useless. Once the last piece of tech they could realistically bring with them was broken down and stashed away, she made a point of catching his eye.

“Thank you,” she said. He gave a small, curt nod. Nearby, Poe was trying to prise open the door that led through into the small ICU.

“Give me a hand?” he said to Finn. “There’s something jamming it – ” Poe had his shoulder wedged into the crack between door and frame, and as Finn joined him the door’s mechanism made a grinding, recalcitrant sound.

“It’s going – ” Poe said, then staggered as the door abruptly gave way, sliding open as the piece of masonry that had apparently been propping it shut from the inside toppled free.

Several things happened all at once. Finn shouted “ _Hey_!”, his hand going for his blaster. Poe, recovering his balance, half-turned towards the interior of the ICU as a figure flew at him – he tried to grab for his own gun, but it tangled in his holster as he tugged at it. Finn fired a shot as the figure cut Poe across the jaw with a flailing arm, sending him sprawling backwards – the blaster bolt went wide. Both Rey and Hux turned with the same motion, his hand moving uselessly to where a pistol would have been, hers grasping for the shape of her own at her hip, remembering too late she had taken her gun-belt off to make room for salvage in the grenade pouch slung round her waist –

– because the figure had a blaster too, and the shot he fired at Hux was at point blank range –

Rey saw the flare of the weapon discharge as thought in slow motion. There was a sudden stillness inside her like the moment a windstorm passes overhead, her consciousness narrowing to nothing but the swish and click of the trigger, the blaster’s muzzle a white spot of fire, the bolt of energy arcing ever so slightly as she plucked it from the air, the Force extending from her fingertips like a second grasping hand. She closed her fist, imagined crushing the ball of flame in her palm, watched as the bolt fizzled into nothingness. It had been less than three feet from Hux’s face.

~

“Give us one good reason why we shouldn’t shove you in an airlock and wave goodbye.” Rose’s voice was fiercer than a woman’s twice her size would have been. Poe felt a bloom of pride in her as he shifted his jaw again, trying to loosen the ache from where the scavenger had clocked him. He’d probably have a pretty sweet bruise in the morning. Fair play that the guy had managed to get a hit in – he didn’t look capable of much else at the moment. Poe guessed he was around twenty-ish, with dark blond hair and clothed in the piecemeal rags of a hardened scavver, but he was shaking so much that his head wobbled sickly on his neck, his pale blue eyes wide and darting in his sweat-slick face.

Then again, Poe thought, he’d be pretty damn nervous too if he had Rose Tico pointing a blaster at him.

The scav hadn’t uttered a word since they had managed to subdue him. Poe wondered if he even spoke Basic. Rey said that when she had tried to look into his mind, she had found his thoughts jumbled and screeching as static, overlaid with a current of terror that bleached out every other concept in his head. The scav had cowered and moaned as she used the Force, to such an extent that Rey had stepped away from him with a grim set to her face, asking if anyone had a canteen of water.

“He’s traumatised and he needs medical attention,” she said. She paused, looked at Poe and Finn in turn. “I think he was in there a long time, without water.”

“Like the soldiers,” Finn said. He looked across at Poe. Poe swallowed; he felt as though he could feel the parched throats of those dead Order officers as dry as ash in his own mouth.

“What do you think it means?” he said. He saw Finn chew at the inside of his cheek. Rey shook her head.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Something happened here that I don’t understand.” Poe thought she was about to say more; her mouth almost half-formed a word, before she seemed to think better of it.

Poe made his way back across the medbay to where they had overturned a couple of containers to make a temporary camp – more of a temporary barricade, he thought, feeling unease creep through him again. Hux had sat down on one of the containers, his back turned slightly to the rest of the group. The catch on his coat sleeve seemed to have come undone, the cuff spilling open; Poe stood for a moment watching as he tried to fasten it again one-handed, fumbling with it, frustration evident in the stiff, self-conscious posture of his shoulders. He hadn’t noticed that Poe was watching him, Poe realised now. The hand that was attempting to fasten his cuff was trembling badly, making the button slip clumsily between his fingers. The fact that he wasn’t even taking his gloves off to do it probably wasn’t helping; Poe had always thought that Hux’s hands looked nimble, dextrous, but the thick First Order leather that his gloves were made out of wasn’t exactly conducive to fine motor skills. It was strange to watch Hux when he didn’t know he was being watched. Poe suspected he was a man who had grown up always aware of there being eyes on him, vigilant to the shifting influences around him that were ever quick to scent his blood in the water.

Poe had been about to turn away, caught by the strangest sensation that he was witnessing Hux in a private moment that did not belong to him, when Hux gave a frustrated little sigh, his shoulders drooping, his hands falling limp in his lap – cuff still undone.

Poe made a point of flagging up his approach, faking a yawn and an exaggerated stretch as he deliberately took the long route around the little circle of containers so Hux had plenty of time to pull whatever defensive walls he needed around himself again. Hux turned his head with a reflexive little jerk to glance up at him, faced forward again almost immediately. Poe saw him neaten the way his hands were folded in his lap, fussing one last brief time with his loose cuff before he rested the palm of his other hand across it as though to hide it from view. It made Poe want to smile. Hux was being as prudish about his sleeve as though he were – dare anyone _think_ it – flashing an ankle at Poe in a scandalous holovid. Come to think of it, Poe didn’t think he had ever seen so much as an inch of Hux’s exposed skin below the head before. Even the Resistance tunic he was wearing beneath his greatcoat was kept buttoned up to the throat, making its soft, deep green seem suddenly severe. Did bring out his eyes though, Poe mused now.

“Need some help?” he said, coming to a stop in front of where Hux was sitting. Hux frowned, seeming genuinely perplexed by the question. Poe nodded in indication at Hux’s folded hands.

“Your sleeve. You seemed to be having trouble.”

Hux’s expression soured, his mouth pinching. “I was not having _trouble_.”

He was still trembling, Poe noticed now; he was visibly trying to stave it off, his arms held very close to his body, the muscles of his face so tense that it brought the already fine line of his jaw into sharp relief and hollowed out his cheeks even further, shadow bruising the concavity beneath his high cheekbones. But every now and then a particularly fierce tremor would run through him that he couldn’t suppress, making him blink and draw a tiny, surprised breath, colour flushing pink in his cheeks. For not the first time, Poe marvelled over the fact that Hux could hide his expressions so well, while his complexion gave him away entirely.

It was absolutely adorable, and completely heartbreaking, and Poe suddenly wanted nothing more than to put him back together again – even if he just started with Hux’s cuff.

“Come on, let me do it?” He went down on one knee in front of Hux quite before he had considered the optics of this gesture. He saw Hux lean back away from him slightly, his eyes a little wide. For a moment they both hesitated, looking at each other.

“It’s not a marriage proposal,” Poe whispered, his voice rough.

“I should hope not.” Hux sounded equally breathless.

Remembering what he was supposed to be doing, Poe held out his hand, palm up. Hux looked at his hand, back up at Poe. The tunic really _did_ bring out his eyes; they were the grey-green of an ancient woodland drenched in rainwater, ringed by a darker band that looked almost hazel. Poe realised he was holding his breath, tried to remember how that whole breathing thing worked again.

With an attitude of immensely wounded dignity that was completely undermined by how intensely he was blushing, Hux offered the offending cuff, not quite resting his hand in Poe’s.

Hux’s sleeve wasn’t closed by buttons after all, Poe could see now as he carefully handled the two open wings of the cuff. Rather there were a concealed series of small metal fasteners inside that clipped together; two of them were missing, which was presumably how the rest of the coat sleeve had worked its way undone.

“You know, I can probably mend this for you,” Poe said, running his thumb across the exposed threads where the fasteners had been. He grinned up at Hux, who glared at him. “Bit of a dab hand at sewing stuff.”

“Yes, _I_ am perfectly capable of that as well,” Hux replied haughtily. Poe’s grin widened, and Hux’s blush deepened.

Poe switched his attention back to Hux’s sleeve. At this angle, and with the cuff lying open, the edge of Hux’s tunic sleeve was very slightly rucked up, exposing part of his wrist. It was narrow and delicate, the skin so fine and so translucent white that its tiny, birdlike bones were almost visible, a pristine riverbed of veins shining blue beneath the surface. Before he even knew he was doing it, Poe traced his thumb pad over the soft, soft skin of Hux’s inner wrist, as he had done across the broken catches.

The sound Hux made was the smallest, most exquisite noise Poe had ever heard. He was staring down at his and Poe’s hands with his lips parted in a small _o_ of astonishment; a fine strand of his hair had come loose from where he had rigidly swept it back and was falling across his forehead. Poe wanted to bury his hands in that soft red-gold hair, wanted to card his fingers through it until it fell unruly and wanton onto Hux’s brow – wanted to crush their mouths together, wanted to taste him, devour him – wanted, _wanted_ so much –

Poe said, his voice very low, “I should have taken you with us.”

Hux, who had still been staring down at their joined hands as though mesmerised by the sight, looked up at him, blinking, nerveless. “What do you mean?”

“When you helped us escape. I should never have left you behind. I should have made you come with us – hell, put you over my shoulder and carried you out of there if I had to. I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive myself for leaving you there.”

“You seriously think I would have come with you?”

“No, I don’t. But you bet I can pick you up.”

“I’m gratified to hear that your strategy for taking prisoners is so sophisticated, Commander Flyboy.”

Poe hesitated. _Wait_. Everyone just hold on for one hot second here. Was Hux – _flirting_ with him? He _was_ , wasn’t he? Was he? _He was_.

Was he?

He gave his best end-of-the-night grin. “That’s Poe to you, sweet-cheeks.”

Hux smirked. “Oh, I hardly think we’re on first name terms. You haven’t even bought me dinner.” He stood up, looking rather steadier in himself than he had been ten minutes ago, his hand moving to rub a little absently at the wrist Poe had been touching. Poe hadn’t even noticed at what point he had managed to fasten Hux’s cuff.

“Hey, that can be arranged,” Poe called after him, very earnest, _meaning_ it, as Hux began to move away. Hux paused, turned, gave him the silkiest sidelong smile that Poe had ever seen.

“Try harder, Dameron,” he said.


	11. Eriadu Whiskey

The scavver gazed blankly at the holo projected from Rey’s navpoint. It showed a bisected subsection of deck three – the mess, the two large meeting rooms, the vast training area, and the officers’ quarters. On the other side of the projection, Rose and Finn were fire-limned by the queasy red emergency lighting spilling through the doorway. It picked out deep umber tones in Rose’s hair, cast the soft, solemn set of Finn’s face in such a glow of shifting shadows that he looked in that moment almost impossibly sad. Poe watched him until it didn’t seem right to watch him anymore. He somehow knew that Finn knew he was looking at him, and chose not to look back.

“I don’t like splitting us up,” Rey was saying, “but if it means we cover more ground more quickly, it might be the best option. What does everyone think?”

“Two teams?” Poe said. “We need someone to stay behind and keep an eye on him.” He jerked his chin at the scavver.

“I’ll do it,” Rose said. She rested her hand meaningfully on her gun. “I’ll make sure he doesn’t get any ideas.”

Rey nodded, her gaze moving to Finn. “Are you okay with this?”

Finn shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Everything about him radiated disquiet, but Poe watched how, very carefully, Finn swallowed, set his jaw, pulled himself together.

Finn said, at last, “I can’t say I like the idea of us splitting up either, but the sooner we can get off this ship the better.”

Hux was standing behind and slightly to the side of Rey’s right shoulder. He was the one person in the group whose gaze she hadn’t deliberately sought out, or whose opinion on the decision she had not solicited. Poe suddenly had the strangest sense that Hux and Rey had already debated upon this matter together, separate from the rest of them, and had already reached a consensus that Rey was only now opening up to the rest of the group. Now Hux’s position behind Rey looked less like that of an unconsidered outsider and more like that of a vulpine counsellor to a straight-backed war-queen. It made Poe, briefly, not recognise either of them. It was a feeling he didn’t quite know what to do with.

Rey swiftly allotted groups – herself and Finn to search the mess and the training area, Poe and Hux to head to the officers’ quarters: both teams rendezvousing outside the corridor that led to the meeting rooms. They each pocketed spare power packs for their blasters – save for Hux, of course. His expression hovered somewhere between the sardonic and the irritable as he watched Poe check the gas cartridge on his own pistol.

“I wondered if you might have deemed me capable of not accidentally shooting you in the back by now.”

Poe grinned, not looking at him as he tightened the adjustable scope. “Accidentally, eh? You’re pretty eager to be given a gun, Hugs.”

“On the contrary,” Hux replied tartly. “I dislike them. Alas, I have this foolish notion of _self-preservation_ should someone try to shoot me in the head again.” He paused, and even without looking at him Poe could feel Hux raking an appraising, dissatisfied glare up and down Poe’s body. “And _you_ don’t possess the ability to stop a blaster bolt at five paces.”

Poe checked the safety on his pistol and slid it back into his thigh holster. “Hey, don’t jump to conclusions so fast there, Hugs – I might have all sorts of secret powers you don’t know about.”

“I’m sure,” Hux said narrowly, a smile skirting at the edges of his mouth. Poe smiled too, and for a moment they looked into each other’s eyes, smiling both.

The discreet service elevator usually used by droids was still operational, and the four of them travelled up to deck three in silence. In the dull reflection of the sleek durasteel, they each seemed to watch one another in separate moments when they thought the other wasn’t looking – Rey’s eyes finding Finn, who in turn glanced to the side, and to Poe, over and over. Poe was divided, trying to search the reflected image of Finn’s face for a trace of his thoughts – but again and again finding his gaze moving past him, and to Hux. Hux alone kept his stare angled downward, his expression shuttered by some private conflict that Poe could only wonder at. In the harsh lighting of the elevator, he looked severe, remote, his face painted with shadow along the bow of his lips and the ridge of his brow. For a moment, Poe tried to see him as he was – not as the defanged prisoner of war who still clung onto his sneering hauteur as though out of habit, or as the blood-drenched general whose reputation had balanced on an inexplicable tightrope between the dreaded and the derided – but as a man, as just a man, whose expression could sometimes be so yearningly open, who forgot himself so utterly at Poe’s nearness – who Poe could feel himself falling for with a slow, inexorable surety that he didn’t know if he could have saved himself from had he wanted to: like drowning but like not drowning.

~

If Poe had been asked to name a hundred things he might have expected to find onboard the First Order’s erstwhile premier star destroyer, a bar would not have been among them.

Well, ‘bar’ was probably stretching it a little. It was obviously meant as a sort of recreational area for high-ranking officers when they were off-duty, with several uncomfortable looking couches covered in a shiny, stern grey fabric and a small, panelled serving area that a droid had clearly once patrolled. Poe’s eye was drawn to the handsome collection of extremely expensive whiskies culled from various distilleries along the Outer Rim, some of which he didn’t even recognise. One, Eriadu Reserve, was so blue he could imagine it painting the drinker’s tongue phosphorescent.

Poe slipped open the bar hatch and swung himself smoothly inside, skidding to a halt with one elbow on the bar and his hand propping his chin, his grin focused on Hux lingering near the doorway.

“So, what brings an enigmatic red-headed stunner like you to a down and dirty dive like this?”

Hux looked like he longed for nothing more in life than to murder him. “What in all the Sith _hells_ are you doing?”

Poe felt his grin widen. “Hey, I just clean the glasses here, princess. Not often a good-looking stranger wanders into this part of town.” Enjoying himself immensely, he tipped an entirely exaggerated, entirely _suggestive_ wink in Hux’s direction. Hux’s eyes widened, colour flooding his face. He looked almost apoplectic.

“Stop this at once,” he barked; there was a residue of what he must have sounded like commanding his soldiers, clipped and cold and in control, but the shrill edge to his voice betrayed how completely, painfully _not_ in control he was feeling. Poe felt himself relenting, suddenly aware he was being cruel.

“Sorry, Hugs.” He straightened out of his corny barkeep pose, instead leaning forward so that both his elbows were resting on the top. He whistled a little ruefully through his teeth as he looked around the room. “Pretty sweet joint you guys had here, though. Wouldn’t have put you down as a drinking man.”

“I am _not_.” Hux’s voice flexed with distaste. “I always thought it was an entirely flagrant waste of resources but apparently it was necessary for _officer morale_.” The sneer in his tone indicated precisely what he thought about _that_ sort of thing.

Poe nodded, still half-playing with him. “Yeah, I mean, the bad guys don’t need morale. You’re powered by righteous indignation and, I don’t know, wanting everything in different tones of black or something.”

“It’s all very _simple_ to you, isn’t it?” The quiet edge to Hux’s voice made Poe look at him. He was still standing by the door, silhouetted in red light, his eyes on Poe. He looked, for a moment, almost unendurably tired.

“The New Republic has long nourished its citizens on a regimen of propaganda that sought to dehumanize anyone who didn’t fall into line alongside it. The Resistance is no different, and I daresay nor was the Order. It is far easier to order the bombing of a system when you believe the enemy has sprung fully formed into existence – never children, never innocents.”

“Yeah, and I suppose you’d know a lot about that, wouldn’t you, Hugs?”

“Yes. I do. I knew about it a long time before the Hosnian System.”

There was a narrative of something grief-woven in the finality of Hux’s voice, an unspoken weight that Poe’s admittedly meagre grasp of galaxy history fumbled to grasp at. He couldn’t remember Hux’s home planet – he’d seen it in a personnel file once –

“Must admit I’m kind of surprised to hear you criticise the First Order,” he said. Hux frowned, looking genuinely confused and wary with it.

“I didn’t.”

“About its propaganda?”

“ _Oh_.” Hux actually laughed. “Typical Resistance short-sightedness. You do realise that propaganda is an extremely useful tool in controlling how an organisation is viewed, in – ” He seemed to briefly search for the right word – “In depicting a version of reality that is to be aspired towards?”

The direction this conversation was taking was starting to make Poe feel uncomfortable. “So what about the Republic’s propaganda?”

Hux looked as though he found Poe’s infinite stupidity a pitiable stain on his character. “I said it was delinquent and wrong-headed. I never said it was wrong to use it.”

Poe very badly wanted to return to the easy silliness of before, but he couldn’t stop himself pushing at this. “Those funny little speeches you used to do – ”

Hux snapped across him, “They were not _funny_.”

Poe shrugged, acquiescing to that. “Yeah, I mean you never exactly looked like you were having fun. But I guess that’s not really a thing in the First Order?”

Hux made a disgusted sound, for the first time venturing further into the room. “This entire conversation is exhausting. _You_ are exhausting.”

Poe grinned, gesturing at the bar stool in front of him like a magnanimous host. “Pull up a chair then, Hugs. You wanted me to buy you dinner? I’ll go one better. I’ll get you a free drink.”

Hux sneered at him, but he did edge his weight a little gingerly onto one of the bar stools adjacent to where Poe was standing. He looked as though he had never sat on such a contraption in his life. “One you pilfered for me like a pirate? How _romantic_.”

The Eriadu Reserve was dated 9 ABY and was wax corked. The good stuff. Poe weighed it in his hand for a moment before pulling his knife from his belt. Behind him, Hux actually gasped.

“You are seriously going to _drink_ whilst on a mission?” He sounded as scandalised as a heroine in one of the soapy holo dramas Poe’s dad used to pretend he didn’t watch, right before she swoons into the arms of the hero. Poe rolled his eyes.

“Relax, Hugs, I’m not an actual idiot.” Using the edge of his knife, he scratched away some of the wax at the bottle’s neck, until a tiny, almost indecipherable insignia was revealed. “There we go. Thought so.” He held the bottle out to Hux, who looked at it blankly, then at Poe irritably.

Poe waggled the bottle a little. “It’s _bootlegged_. Looks like whoever fronted this bar had a nice little earner on their hands.”

Hux’s lips parted as several expressions, astonishment, disbelief, dismay, flew across his face. His cheeks were very pink. “I assure you, you are entirely mistaken. The Order would _never_ – ”

“No, no.” Poe set the bottle back down in its rack, pocketed his knife again. “I’ve seen them come through Kijimi. Only a smuggler who knows their stuff would use that mark.”

Hux’s mouth opened, closed. His hands, where they rested uneasily on the bar, mirrored the action, tensing into fists and then stuttering loose again. He looked absolutely, inexplicably lost.

“Hey, it’s okay.” Poe leant against his elbows again. He was standing almost opposite Hux now, the narrow wedge of the bar the only thing separating them. Poe wanted to cover Hux’s hands with his own, to stop them fluttering like that. “It would have been pretty weird if the First Order hadn’t smuggled stuff. I’m just surprised you didn’t know about it.”

“I didn’t.” Hux’s voice was small. He looked as though he had, in the space of five minutes, been turned upside down, thoroughly shaken, and plopped back down to find the world had revolved dizzyingly on like a merry-go-round and he didn’t recognise a single part of it anymore. Poe felt something push at the back of his throat that felt like the ache of love.

“Okay.” He said. He rolled his shoulders back, felt the pleasant little click in his back as he did so. Looked down at his hands where they rested just inches away from Hux’s. “Imagine I had just met you in a cantina, in the middle of some dusted up town, in some forgotten about system far, far away from here.” His voice was very low, very soft. He watched Hux’s face as he spoke. “Would you let me buy you a drink?”

Hux blinked, his eyelashes catching the light in a flash of palest, softest gold. “Would only smuggled brandy be on offer?” His voice was rough.

Poe smiled. “No. In this busted out place in the middle of nowhere, where no one knows our names, they serve everything you ever dreamed of.”

The slightest, saddest smile he had ever seen stirred like a ghost at the edges of Hux’s mouth. “Then – I would ask you to buy me tea.”

Poe tilted his head, quizzical. “Tea?”

“Yes. Tarine tea.”

“Okay?”

“I - I don’t really drink alcohol.”

“That’s okay.” Poe could feel his smile going on and on. He somehow thought he could look at Hux and smile like this for the rest of his life. “I’m not an expert on tarine tea, so next I’d probably ask you how you like it.”

“Black. Bitter. Steeped for five minutes.”

“Ah.” Poe leant back, grinning. “I see you’re a man of taste.”

“Don’t mock me,” Hux nearly whispered, no bite in his voice.

“I’m not.” Poe closed the space between them again. He suddenly wasn’t smiling anymore. He cleared his throat. “So it seems kinda presumptuous of me that I’ve bought you a drink and all, and I haven’t even asked you your name. Don’t want you to think that I’m not – you know – ”

Hux’s eyes flicked to his. “What?”

Poe cleared his throat again, the words seeming to lodge there. Hux wasn’t the only one blushing now. “Gonna be a gentleman,” Poe said at last, almost whispering too.

Hux almost blinked. Didn’t. Kept looking at him like he couldn’t stop.

Poe said, “You still haven’t told me your name.”

A shift in Hux’s rapt expression, a subtle tensing of his brows. Poe felt him begin to slip away again, almost. “You know what my name is.”

Poe nodded. “Yeah, but in this run-down, out of town, hokey old place, we’ve only just met, remember? I don’t know who you are, or anything about you. Maybe you give me a fake name, that’s fun sometimes. Maybe – ”

“Armitage,” Hux cut across him. His voice wobbled: impatient, terrified. “Armitage.”

“Armitage.” Poe held it in his mouth, tasting its contours. He had never spoken Hux’s given name aloud before, and now he wanted to say it over and over, feeling the roll of every letter and syllable across his tongue: to keep it secret, safe, unspoken by anyone else.

“Nice to meet you, Armitage,” he whispered. “I’m Poe. I’m a bit of a hotshot back where I come from, but here I don’t really have a clue which way is up anymore. And I don’t think you do either.”

Hux’s mouth trembled, his nostrils flaring. He was looking into Poe’s face as though he were trying to commit every angle of it to memory. “And then,” he said, his voice rasping, urgent. “What would you do then?”

Poe swallowed. He felt the universe flex around them in all its unending, impossibly fragile silence. They were both leaning forward now, into each other’s space. He could see Hux’s eyes lingering on his mouth, his pupils blown wide with a piercing, desperate hunger.

“Maybe – ” Poe swallowed again, tried to steady his voice. Tried, again. “Maybe I’d say – is this okay?” He lifted his hand, very, very slowly, moving it towards Hux’s face. Hux closed his eyes.

“I’d say, is this okay?” Whispering now. His palm against the curve of Hux’s cheek, his thumb coming to rest just at the corner of Hux’s mouth. Stroking: found the soft, supple bow of Hux’s upper lip. “Is this okay?”

A nod, so tiny as to be almost imperceptible. Hux’s eyes were still closed and the fragile, pale pink skin of his eyelids creased slightly as his expression flinched and quivered and bloomed beneath Poe’s hand.

Poe said, “Is this okay?” and Hux did open his eyes then.

“Yes,” he said.

And then Poe was leaning further in, and Hux was leaning too, and when their lips brushed it was like a million shards of light filled Poe’s head. They kissed, slowly at first: little, delicate, almost hesitant sips of one another, their noses bumping, until Hux made the softest moan imaginable in the very back of his throat and Poe’s hand shifted from his cheek to tangle in that soft red hair, their mouths claiming one another like the final gasp of ecstatic air before drowning.


	12. Coda Sign

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wowee writer's block is kicking my bum all over the place right now. apologies in advance for how short this chapter is compared to normal. it didn't do what i wanted it to do, go where i wanted it to go -- i pretty much hate all of it but really want to keep on my regular-ish updating schedule so decided getting it out there was better than sitting on it agonising over every sentence and hating it more with every edit xD i hope everyone will forgive me for putting out content that i really don't feel is up to my usual standard (not that my usual work is a STANDARD ahaa). hopefully my muse will start picking up again now that we're starting to get into actual plottiness and gingerpilot goodness. anyway, now that i've suitably lowered everyone's expectations!
> 
> Trigger warning for mild horror in the final paragraph.

His blood singing in his ears, the impossible, ludicrous _rightness_ of the moment making him almost drunk with confidence, Poe drew Hux into his arms.

Or tried to. The kriffing bar was in the way. He realised very quickly that he wasn’t going to be able to do anything about this without breaking the kiss, and briefly wondered if it would be at all possible to high jump over the bar while still keeping his mouth attached to Hux’s. The logistics of that might be tricky, but no one could fault Poe for optimism. All these considerations ran through his head in the space of roughly ten seconds, during which time his one hand made a thorough, luxurious disarray of Hux’s hair, while his other slid along Hux’s right shoulder to clasp him gently behind his neck. He could feel the rapid, skimming patter of Hux’s pulse against his thumb, at that tender, most vulnerable juncture beneath his jaw, and he so very badly wanted to bring Hux’s body against his, to press their thundering hearts together.

 _Dammit Dameron, you a man or a droid?_ He swung one leg up over the counter, the movement not quite as fluid as had envisaged in his head, boosting himself with his hand so he cleared the bar with his other leg, his hand on Hux’s shoulder for support. Somewhere along the way he was forced to break the kiss, eliciting a small, muffled yelp of surprise (or perhaps that had been disappointment? Yeah, Poe was going to go with disappointment) from Hux – so much for being smooth. Hux seemed almost too dazed to react in any meaningful way, but he made a hesitant, catching sort of gesture with both hands as he watched Poe scramble over the bar.

“Dameron – ” he began, coming to, but Poe had gained the other side now and his hands were in Hux’s hair again, his mouth on Hux’s mouth. Hux was still perched on the bar stool and now that Poe was standing right next to him, he found himself in the unusual position of looking down at Hux instead of slightly up. Damn, it was a good angle to be at.

Poe kissed him, slower now, deeper, gently tilting Hux’s head back as Hux seemed to unfurl against him. He tasted clean, slightly antiseptic from the little oral sanitiser capsules in the _Falcon_ ’s refresher that Poe knew he assiduously used, his tongue soft and small and hesitant as Poe flicked his own against it. Hux’s hands had come to rest on the lapels of Poe’s jacket and were making an ineffectual sort of tugging motion against the fabric, his fingers tightening inwards. Without quite noticing when they had got there, Poe realised his own hands were loosening the catches on Hux’s collar, exposing the white, slender column of his throat. He was sort of half-straddling Hux’s lap at this point, and Hux’s skin tasted like fire beneath his mouth as he sought the now bare curve of his neck. He felt rather than heard Hux moan, the sound only perceptible through the tiny vibration in Hux’s throat against Poe’s lips.

Something was buzzing at his hip. Poe made a vague attempt to bat it away, introducing his tongue now to the pulse point beneath the curve of Hux’s jaw, lapping and nipping as he traversed slowly upwards, seeking the perfect, delicate shell of Hux’s ear. He had just drawn Hux’s earlobe between his teeth, so very gently, when the buzzing came again and Hux stirred beneath him, his voice hitching, almost a sigh, as he rasped urgently, “Dameron, the radio – ”

 _Shit_. Poe scrabbled for the transmitter at his belt, almost falling over Hux’s legs as he tried to right himself. Still half in Hux’s lap, he switched the radio to receive and lifted it to his mouth.

“Rey?” He sounded like he’d run a mile. “Rey, you guys okay?”

A short burst of static, and then Rey’s voice, clipped, slightly breathless. “We’re fine. We’re in the training area. Poe – ” She hesitated; he heard Finn’s muffled voice in the background. “Poe, you need to see this.”

“Okay, we’re coming. I-I mean, on our way.” He clicked the radio off and looked at Hux. They were both panting.

 _Dammit_ but he wanted a hundred years to explore every inch of Hux’s body with his tongue, to kiss and nip and taste all that milky white skin until Hux writhed and moaned and came apart beneath him. He looked almost completely undone as it was, his hair ruffled from Poe’s fingers and falling across his brow, his mouth reddened and a little swollen, the incongruity of his loose collar making him look almost bare with abandonment. He began to speak, seemed to stumble over himself, shook his head as though to loosen something inside it. Drew his lower lip between his teeth in a way that made Poe long to kiss him all anew.

“This can _never_ happen again.”

Poe laughed, a little breathlessly. He still felt reckless and slightly high on the adrenaline coursing through him. “I know. I can’t believe I nearly had you on top of a First Order bar. I mean, that would have been hot as hell, but even _I_ think beds are more comfortable so yeah, let’s aim for a bed next time, beds are _good_ – ”

“There will not _be_ a next time,” Hux snapped. Poe broke off mid-flow, his smile slipping. He watched as Hux visibly tried to draw himself back together with the sense of helplessly witnessing something precious slip between his fingers. Hux’s own hands were at his collar, closing it and fastening it with tight, jerky little motions. He wasn’t meeting Poe’s eye.

Poe said, very gently, dreading the answer, “Did I hurt you?”

“ _No_.” Hux’s face crumpled in an irritable, evasive little frown. His collar now fastened, his hands moved to slick back through his hair with a practised efficiency that would have looked more convincing if he wasn’t still trembling so much. He couldn’t get the dishevelled fall of his fringe to stay back off his brow, and after a few fussy little swipes at it he sighed, apparently giving up, his hands coming to rest back in his lap.

“You didn’t hurt me,” he said. “In fact, I fairly believe you did everything in your power _not_ to hurt me. No one has – ” He broke off, the edges of his mouth tensing.

“No one has what?” Poe prompted, still careful, still hating the inevitability of this.

He saw Hux take two little, hesitant breaths. The emergency lights were reflected like twin dying supernovae in his pale eyes. “No one has ever been quite so conscientious about _not_ hurting me in my entire life.”

 _Oh_. Poe breathed out. Somehow none of this was a surprise to him, and yet it was so sad, it was so sad, he thought he couldn’t bear it. He didn’t know what he could say to make it better.

Hux said, very deliberate, “This – ” he made a gesture between himself and Poe, still not quite looking at him – “was an error of my own judgment. It cannot be allowed to happen again.” He paused, drew a hesitating breath, looked at Poe. “It was _not_ your fault.”

“Hux, _I_ kissed _you_.”

“I let it happen.”

“Did you want it?”

“What I _want_ is of no consequence. It never has been. The fact of the matter is that any sort of – _fraternisation_ between us stands to seriously jeopardise the integrity of the entire mission.”

Poe leapt on that, all while part of him hated himself for pushing Hux like this. “What about after? Once we’re back at the Resistance base?”

“ _After_?” Hux looked at him, uncomprehending. “How is there any _after_ , Dameron? Nothing will have changed between us. You will still be a Rebel commander. I will still be your prisoner. There is no possibility of anything – happening between us.”

Poe leant forward, feeling as though he were fighting for the life of something he couldn’t even explain to himself. “Hux, you let me call you _Armitage_ – ”

“ _Meaningless_ ,” Hux hissed back. His eyes were very bright in his pale face.

Poe let out a breath. “Okay,” he said. “Okay.” Nothing had ever been less okay in his entire life. He looked down, rubbed a hand over his face, pushed it back through his hair. He could still taste Hux on his lips. “I’m sorry.”

“As am I.” Hux had finished putting himself back together again. Any trace of the vulnerable, delicate, gossamer-fragile man Poe had been kissing moments ago was gone. Almost. At the edge of his mouth, there was a small, pinkened little chafe mark. It looked rather like a cold sore, but by the time they had trekked their way in silence to the dark, gleaming quadrangle outside the training area, the swelling on the tender curve of Hux’s lower lip was more noticeable, and Poe saw Rey’s eyes linger briefly on Hux’s mouth, before moving across to Poe.

“Come on,” she said. She held Poe’s gaze for a moment, her expression grave and fixed. “It’s bad.”

The _Finalizer’s_ training area doubled as its parade ground, a place for the stormtroopers to exercise as well as undergo inspection. It was difficult to get a perspective on the size of the room because it too was shrouded in the queasy gloaming of the emergency lights, but Poe had a sense of enormous, cavernous expanse, of distant walls and a high ceiling that seemed to be strung with a multitude of what looked like sacks. Training dummies, or punch bags, Poe thought – there were a lot of them – and that _smell_ –

Beside him, he heard Hux take a sharp breath. Poe’s first instinct was protectiveness; he wanted to step in front of Hux or put his arms around him and urge him to turn away – _he didn’t want him to see this_. But Hux was pushing past him, nearly stumbling, and it was Rey who put out her hand to stay him, Hux turning almost wildly in her grasp to face her, their profiles silhouetted in red light as behind them the unnumbered bodies hung like a hideous, inverted forest in the darkness.


	13. Prognosticating Ruin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i couldn't resist doing a seriously on the nose callback to one of Poe's absolute clanger lines in TRoS in this chapter. i think it'll be pretty obvious which one it is xD
> 
> trigger warning for discussion of death and mild suicidal ideation. nothing major, but it's there.

The first body they cut down was a young officer cadet Hux had recommended for promotion shortly after Crait. He had carefully filed away a hundred, a hundred hundred names of the various soldiers who had served under him, putting face to rank to service history in a particular sort of system that made sense to him but would probably verge towards the inexplicable if anyone else tried to comprehend it. This system had always served him well, however; he had never wanted to look upon the women and men under his command as faceless entities when so many had pledged their youth and paid in blood to the First Order, and being able to swiftly bring to mind details of _who_ rather than simply _what_ they were was crucial to this. Recalling when soldiers had missed commendations was one of the idiosyncratic ways his eidetic memory worked; this girl had lost her promotion to second lieutenant on two separate occasions when she had been serving on the _Absolution_ , but after being seconded to the _Finalizer_ under Hux’s command she had comported herself with distinction and was, he recalled, uncommonly brave. His recommendation of her had been based as much on her own merit as it had been on her courage doused in the red salt of Crait. Her stripes said now that her promotion had never come: third time unlucky. Hux also realised in the same moment that he couldn’t remember her name.

The second was a stormtrooper whose face he had never seen, but who had been part of the most recent intake of displaced children from one of the Outer Rim worlds following the New Republic’s bombardment of a smuggling colony. She hadn’t completed her basic training. He couldn’t recall her designation without looking at her dogtags, even though he knew it had been clear as crystal in his head just like every single other designation of _every single other stormtrooper_ who had ever gone through his programme. His hand tremored just slightly as he reached for her idents, before he crushed his fingers together in a fist. _It would come to him_.

The next two were engineers who had worked directly under him during the development of Ren’s interceptor. He knew perfectly well who they were and yet still their names eluded him. It was almost as though he could see the shape of their identities scratching a patina against the flickering shadow show of memory his hindbrain tried to conjure, but he could not bring them into focus. He worked his jaw a little to try and draw some saliva into his dry mouth; he felt as though he were trying to breathe in shallow, drowning gulps, every hitch of air only serving to constrict his lungs further.

The fourth: a young ensign who had been a constant presence on the bridge during Hux’s tenure onboard the _Finalizer_. There was _no excuse_ not to know his name. Hux thought this with such furious shame in himself that for a moment the man’s strangely slack, painless expression blurred and distorted in his vision. He closed his eyes, mentally flicking through the judicious system that had always served him so impeccably in the past, feeling as though his could visualise the orderly interior of his mind as a room through which a sudden, tumultuous wind had blown, upending furniture and scattering documents in every direction. His breath was coming even tighter now, burning in his throat and his chest, and it was difficult to hear the murmured voices of the others above the building whine in his ears. He tried to count – _1-2-3-4-5 stop this **right now**_ – but his racing brain was still trying to piece together these dead faces and their names, names that he _should_ and _did_ know, and he couldn’t focus on the rhythm of counting, even less focus on the repetition of it to calm himself down. He had the terrible feeling that at some point one of his lungless, panting breaths was going to emerge as a whimper.

The terror of this realisation, that his mind was somehow _failing_ him and there was nothing he could seemingly do to stop it, made him straighten from where he was bent over the corpse of the fifth in this interminable roll call of death – another face that he recognised but couldn’t identify; both wanting to turn away and to press on at the same time: _to get this over with_. The enormity of the task filled his throat; there were so many of them, it _couldn’t_ be the entire crew – some must have escaped, reached safety – oh please –

“Steady – okay, I’ve got it,” Rey said. He had never seen the Force used with such careful, diligent control before. As Rey loosed each body from their nauseating binds and lowered them gently to the ground, she was as patient with every gesture as though they were all living still. Hux might have been grudgingly admiring, intrigued even, to watch her work – sentiments he would never have imagined feeling towards a Force user during his association with Ren. But right now all other sense was swamped by the rising tide of panic he could feel blotching the edges of his consciousness, a panic that he didn’t know if he would be able to adequately swallow this time without making an intolerable fool of himself. He tried his best to run some calculations – how he could extricate himself from the group without drawing undue attention to himself, so he could ride out what was promising to be a full-blown panic attack in relative privacy. The entry to the locker rooms was ahead along the right-hand wall, and he wondered if he would be able to reach it without breaking into a run.

“General?” He realised he had been staring at the same spot on the dead soldier’s uniform sleeve for the last few seconds without blinking – at an almost miniscule patch on the shoulder seam where it had been sewn together using thread that didn’t quite match the rest of the fabric. The soldier had obviously mended it himself at some point using tiny, delicate stitches, the join almost indiscernible unless you were looking at it up close like this. The sight of it was suddenly so overwhelming that Hux felt the hot pressure of tears at the back of his throat.

He should have died along with these people, _his_ people.

Of all the causes he had ever harboured to loathe Kylo Ren for, and there were many and sundry, this was perhaps the most grievous of them all – robbing him of his right to a death alongside the crew he had trained and devoted his life to. For as long as he could remember, Hux’s entire existence had been focused towards one solitary, blood-soaked, frantic aim – to survive at all costs. It had been for so long the only thing he had ever desired – desire as flagrant as the teetering knife edge of unresolved sexual release – desire for power, for prestige, for security – to attain all of that and more so that he would be _safe_ , for the first time in his entire life. But now the abject meaninglessness of his continued life dragged at him like Tatooine quicksand, pulling him down into ruins of despair that he knew would be lethal for him if he didn’t get a hold of himself. Now to live seemed unnatural, abhorrent, an erroneous flaw that needed to be corrected, could not be allowed to endure. His entire existence was a mistake: what possible end could there be to justify him carrying on?

_The taste of Dameron’s lips against his own – the firm, explorative track of his hand against Hux’s cheek, through his hair, gentle in a way he had never imagined possible –_

“General.” Rey’s voice again. She had turned so that her back was to Finn and Dameron where they were each bent over the body of a stormtrooper only dressed in partial armour, effectively shielding Hux from their line of vision. She was looking at him very straight, very even, her dark eyes asking a question he didn’t know if he could bear to answer.

Once again, he felt her at the edges of his mind. This time he knew for a fact that she was deliberately signalling her presence there, asking his permission to step a little closer to his consciousness so that her thoughts could brush up against his own. He had never felt the Force used on him with such courteous, open-handed candour before; indeed, she was not using her power _on_ him at all, but rather inviting him into some sort of union with her through it, a state of parity that put him as much on a level footing as it did her. Rey’s mind felt cool, crisp, reassuring against the desperate, reeling tumult of his own, the sole thought she sent out to him more like an impulse, a suggestion against his brain rather than the invasive scratch of another’s voice in his own head – she was asking, without asking, _are you all right? Can I help?_

He was shaking his head, although he wasn’t sure what it was in denial of – his need for help, or her help itself. He was beyond help – unworthy of it. He kept taking sharp little breaths, inward, inward, inward, unable to breathe out again; something nearly a sob teetered perilously on his vocal chords.

“Come on.” She turned, gesturing for him to follow her. He obeyed almost without thinking, walking where she walked as she picked her way through the haphazard lines of bodies, to where the one Rey had most recently brought down – a young woman – was lying on her back, hands resting neatly at her sides. In death, the woman’s face bore a disconcerted little frown, her head tilted slightly to the side exposing a small, purplish bruise beneath her left ear where the rope had chafed her. Another young officer cadet, less talented than the first but equally as spirited if he recalled, though Hux was feeling increasingly disordered in his head and was fearful that by now each face was blurring into the next, the memories attached to them growing as faint and unattainable as the names that still hung just out of his reach.

Rey stood over the cadet, her head inclined slightly as she looked down at the still form. Hux didn’t think he could bear to look any further, but he joined her at the dead woman’s side nonetheless, compelled by that strange bridge she had made between their minds. In silence, he stared down at the prone soldier, feeling a rising surge of frantic sorrow filling his chest.

“ _What – happened_?” he grated out, his voice desperate.

Rey nodded, once, and showed him.

~

Finn said, “It was like – a sacrifice?”

There had been twenty-seven bodies in total, far from the entire crew complement which added weight to the likelihood that most had managed to escape. Rey could only speculate as to why these few had remained behind, along with the three they had found in the storeroom. Why had they not shared the same grim fate as the people in the training area? Had they been attempting to escape as well, and if so, from what?

Hux had wanted to divide the bodies into two separate groups, troopers from officers, but Finn had snapped at him that surely in death they had earned some kind of equal footing. Hux hadn’t responded, his lips drawing together in a little cinch of displeasure, and the bodies were left as they were. Rey suspected that his desire to separate the two was not derived from a sense of wanting to segregate ground soldiers from their betters, but rather so that the two groups were more methodical and thus easier to identify. She could feel his almost desperate need to impose some semblance of order on the situation gnawing at him like the itch of a badly healed wound.

Now, she said, “I think it was like a means of drawing power, or augmenting it.”

“What do you mean?” Poe had been roughing up his hair so much that the curls now sprang loose and unruly about his head. He had a slightly wild look in his eyes still, his glance drawn over and over to the lines of bodies. Rey had noticed him wiping his face when he had been bent over the remains of an especially young girl.

“Leia once told me that when a catastrophic event occurs, a massacre or something similar to that, it can create – voids in the Force, like a wound. She described it like a pool of water, with the echoes of the wound rippling out over space.” Rey paused, thinking about the light-swallowing gulf she had sensed in the atmosphere around her when they had been on the bridge. “The thing is, the dark side thrives on it. Sites of enormous pain and violence, places that have been drenched in death – the dark drinks it in and grows stronger, and that corruption can last for centuries in the Force without anyone even knowing it was there.”

“But Exegol is already pretty much hooked up to the Sith mainframe,” Poe said. “Why would anyone need any more extra terrible shit to double down on all the fucking awful crap that’s already happened on that planet?”

“Someone who’s just had their ass handed to them and needs the boost,” Finn said. Everyone looked at him.

“No,” said Poe. “Seriously? How could _somehow_ Palpatine be back _again_?”

Finn shrugged. “I don’t know. Does anything kill that insane old fossil?”

“The Palpatine that Ben and I fought was a clone,” Rey said. “Sidious was using it like a vessel to siphon his own spirit into, but the body wasn’t able to sustain it – it was disintegrating, falling apart. It wouldn’t have lasted much longer even if we hadn’t destroyed it.”

“So you think when old Palps died again, his soul or whatever just went flying off into the void and attached itself to the first boatload of people it came across?” There was an angry edge to Poe’s voice that Rey couldn’t blame him for. She shook her head.

“No,” she said. “I don’t think that. But I do think that whatever happened on this ship was something like a ritual.”

Poe mussed his hair again, holding a handful in his fist briefly and tugging at it. “Well, this entire mission just went completely sideways, didn’t it?”

Rey noticed Hux’s gaze follow and catch on the motion of Poe’s hand, and she watched now as he lifted his own hand seemingly unconsciously to touch the back of it against the tiny cut at the edge of his mouth. The energy between them in the Force was like the hot, bright pressure of water behind a dam, and she deliberately withdrew her thoughts from theirs, not wanting to intrude on something private. Before Leia’s training, she had never anticipated how invasive other people’s thoughts could be, how diligent she would have to be about tuning them out like radio chatter. Poe’s thoughts, when she happened to accidentally intercept them, were largely uncomplicated; he was usually thinking about BB-8, or his X-Wing, or food, or sex. But now the cold, gleaming outline of Hux’s presence was loud in his head, while the teeming rapids of Hux’s own thoughts ran at her so quickly in the opposite direction that she wouldn’t have been able to catch hold of them had she wanted to. Overlaying all of it was a sense of pain, a searing, yearning hopefulness, and a longing so shot through with grief that Rey mentally looked away, knowing it was not hers to see.

Hux said, “The entire ship needs to be locked down. We can’t afford to allow any more scavengers to potentially contaminate what is in effect a crime scene.”

“This place was a crime scene long before any of this happened.” Finn pitched his voice low as though he didn’t really mean anyone to hear, or was regretting the words at the same time as he spoke them, but Hux reeled on him, his face suddenly white, stricken, furious.

“I suppose you think what happened to these people was some kind of twisted _justice_ ,” he spat. He looked ready to spring at Finn with claws out, and for not the first time Rey found herself bracing to break up a fight.

Finn had set his jaw, his expression stubborn, digging in. “It’s not justice when half the dead people in this room are kids who were only here in the first place because they were brainwashed.”

Hux sneered. “They were still here because they weren’t _cowards_ like you.” He was at bay now, and had been here a thousand times before, fangless with his back against a wall, and Rey could see he was all the more dangerous for it.

Sweat was glistening on Finn’s brow, his mouth working as though the hatred he felt was something he could taste. “You want to say that again, _general_?”

Hux made a contemptuous little “ _Ah_ ” sound, half a bark of laughter. “Oh, I will happily tell you what a cretinous _embarrassment_ you are to your designation – ”

Finn moved very quickly, closing the space between them in one step as his hand came up to close on Hux’s collar. Hux had clearly been anticipating this and sidestepped to the right of him, but not quite quickly enough; snared, he twisted in Finn’s grip so violently that he nearly slipped an arm out of his coat, and when Finn’s fist arced up to meet him it missed its intended target, instead catching Hux high on his cheekbone in a glancing blow. Hux went down on one knee as he continued to attempt to wrest himself from Finn’s grasp, while Poe leapt forward – “ _Hey_!” – trying to get in-between the two of them. Rey’s hands were holding fistfuls of the back of Finn’s jacket, trying to pull him back. The four of them scuffled, briefly, fruitlessly, before Finn let go of Hux’s coat, almost thrusting Hux away from him.

“These people are dead because of _you_ , Hux.” He nearly shouted it, and for a moment Rey felt the blistering heat of Finn’s pain so clearly she gasped, experiencing it as her own. There were tears in his eyes, tears on his face. He was staring at Hux, and at Poe next to him. “They are dead because of _you_.”

Hux was still on one knee, his hand against his face, his eyes wild, and Rey saw Poe slip his hand beneath Hux’s elbow as if he meant to help him up – but Hux jerked his arm out of Poe’s grasp as though the gesture had burned him.

“ _Don’t touch me_ ,” he snarled, and Poe fell back like he’d been slapped.

Rey felt Finn almost seize beneath the hold she still had on his jacket. “Why are you defending him, Poe?” he demanded – but his voice was coming apart too much to demand: he was nearly begging. “ _What’s wrong with you_?”

Poe visibly flinched. “Finn – ” he began, but Finn was already turning away, shaking out the hand he had hit Hux with.

“I’m gonna radio Chewie to get us out of here. This place is evil.” He looked back over his shoulder at them. He was still breathing hard. Rey felt, very clearly, the place in the Force where their spirits had bonded – loosen a little, and stutter.

“I don’t know what kind of spell he’s got you guys under,” Finn said, “but if you believe in _any_ kind of justice, _you’ll leave him behind_.”


	14. Up in Smoke

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i feel like the falcon probably doesn't actually have a refresher, but hey maybe leia made han install one after they got married
> 
> mild trigger warning for referenced past child abuse and for self-harm

The bruise had come out in a tender bloom of violet, beginning at the outer edge of his eye and spreading beneath it in a way that made him look even more exhausted than he already felt. Hux regarded his reflection critically, for as long as he could stand it, before he looked down at the water-filled basin again, pushing his hands back through his damp hair.

The recycled water on this ship was repellent. First Order vessels kept theirs regularly filtered, so that any impurities in the system were skimmed off usually before it left the pipe. The _Falcon’s_ was borderline stagnant, cloudy with the chemicals pumped into it to keep it from going entirely bad that made the water so harsh that soap dissolved rather than foamed when you rubbed it between your hands. Hux would ordinarily have refused to go anywhere near it, but he felt grimy and sweat-filmed all over – needed to scrape the dead atmosphere of the _Finalizer_ off his skin and out of his hair. So far as he could tell it was only Finn and Tico who kept to acceptable standards of hygiene; both Rey and Dameron seemed to believe a quick wipe down with a greasy rag was equivalent to a bath, and as for the Wookiee –

The razor had a little plastic safety guard that lay flat across the blade, the kind they usually gave to cadets to scratch at downy new beard growth with during puberty. Hux had used a straight razor for as long as he could remember and he fumbled with this one now, clumsy between his fingers as he finished soaping up his face and began to shave. His skin came up pink and raw beneath each stroke of the blade; he couldn’t get the razor to catch properly on the fine stubble on his upper lip no matter how ridiculously he contorted his face to reach it, and he ended up cutting himself several times before he had managed to get his face even marginally smooth. He sloshed the razorblade in the filmy water to rinse it, feeling irritated rather than soothed by the ritual.

Once he had washed his face, he set about dismantling the razorblade. The plastic housing came away fairly easily, but the metal couplings that held the blades together were a little more fiddly. He set the remains of it down on the side of the sink so he could get better purchase, using the edge of the discarded plastic case to prise the couplings apart. There were three blades in total, each slightly smaller than his little finger, surprisingly durable when he experimented with bending them and satisfyingly sharp now that they were freed from the guard. Laying them end to end along the sink, he contemplated how he could fashion them into a knife. Soldering would be the most efficient way of doing it, but it wasn’t like he had access to such tools unsupervised. It was something of a miracle they had given him the means to shave in the first place. He would have felt guilty about it, if their naivety wasn’t so appalling.

 _Not naivety – generosity_ , a small and entirely unwelcome voice whispered in his head. Hux scowled and rearranged the blades again.

An adhesive might work, even something like a glue stat. He could use it to dissolve the edges of the blades and seal them together. The _Falcon_ , naturally, did not possess such an advanced concept as a medbay, but there was a medical box in the crew quarters. He just needed everyone to be looking the other way long enough for him to be able to root through it.

Perhaps he could plead treatment for his bruise, he thought with a bitter little twist of his mouth. Pleasing to think of the _stormtrooper_ being the one to equip him with a cover story.

For now, he made do with wrapping the blades in a little square of cloth he had cannibalised from an undershirt to use as a handkerchief, before slipping the bundle up his sleeve. In the absence of anything resembling a comb, he used his fingers to part his hair and card it back off his face as much as it would stay. He didn’t think he would ever get used to his hair being this _undone_ ; he disliked touching his own hair almost as much as he disliked other people touching it. As a child, he had compulsively pulled his hair out in strands, never more than one or two at a time, finding a certain rush of relief in the brief, sharp pop of pain as the hair left the follicle, or else would twist thicker locks of his hair around his finger and tug until it hurt. His father seizing a fistful of his hair to slam his head against a wall didn’t have quite the same effect. Sloane had been rather more circumspect in her correcting of this error of young Armitage’s: she had made him sit on his hands. Somewhere between the two of them, Hux had managed to train himself out of the habit by the time he entered the Academy. He still found himself wanting to do it on occasion however, and gelling his hair back in a severe coif had always been the best way of combating the urge. Now no such deterrent – his hand hovered a little uncertainly in the attitude of sweeping his fringe back off his brow, his fingers tightening in his hairline. The urge built to an almost unbearable pitch, before he snarled at his own reflection and yanked his hand away, looking down at his ungloved palms instead. There were matching scars at the base of both his thumbs that would do, and he curled his index and middle fingers inward to scrape at them, counting to eight – that was enough.

_He hadn’t disliked Dameron’s hands in his hair, not at all, it had been such a relief – he had felt **safe** –_

He startled slightly as the door to the fresher opened behind him. In his head, Dameron had been all dark eyes and the secret, warm pressure of his mouth, the memory of his taste as vivid on his tongue as though he had been kissing him moments ago. Now, he was dressed down to his undershirt, his arms bare, golden, beautiful – Hux’s mouth flooded with water at the sight, filled with a hunger so opaque, so unrelenting, that he felt almost suffocated by it.

“Don’t you people ever _knock_?” he heard himself snapping. Dameron, who to his credit had looked equally as surprised to see Hux here, shrugged and smiled, infuriatingly attractive.

“Sorry, should have made sure you were decent first,” he said. “You, uh, you finished in here, Hugs?”

Hux gave a curt nod – “Yes” – making to move past Dameron, but Dameron lifted his hand towards Hux’s face as they came level, his expression darkening.

“That bruise is bad,” he said. “Damn, we could do with some ice on this ship. Then we could have cocktails after we put some on your eye. I know you said you don’t really drink, so I’d make one of my specialities – on Yavin 4 there’s this bioluminescent orchid that tastes exactly like star fruit – ”

“Dameron,” Hux said. “You’re rambling.” Dameron’s shoulders fell.

“Yeah,” he said. “I am, aren’t I?” He regarded Hux for a moment, his brows drawn together.

“Are you okay?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Hux said, making to move past him again, but Dameron raised both his hands now in a staying, slightly pleading gesture.

“Look, Hugs.” He did that insufferable thing with his hair, coursing a hand back through it and making the curls spring loose. Hux’s stomach fluttered at the sight, and his treacherous cock gave a twitch of interest in response. The shift and flex of Dameron’s bicep that the motion had caused made him feel almost abject with desire.

Dameron paused with his one hand rubbing the back of his neck, looking down as though in thought, before he said, again, a little more emphatically, “ _Look_. We need to talk about what happened.”

Hux couldn’t imagine anything worse than _talking about what happened_. He elected to deliberately misunderstand instead. “I suppose I am expected to owe the Resistance eternal gratitude that your friends allowed me back on this ship.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Dameron sounded, briefly, frustrated. “And anyway, _no_. Of course we don’t. Finn over-reacted. He’s – he’s having a hard time right now.”

“I’m sure,” Hux said thinly. Dameron sighed.

“I meant – we need to talk about what happened in the bar.”

“I hardly see what there is to talk about. It was a mistake, nothing more.”

He saw a flicker of hurt pass in Dameron’s eyes. “It wasn’t a mistake to me.” His voice was very quiet.

The silence that followed Dameron’s words broke across Hux like the sea foam of an Arkanisian wave, drenching him through. For a moment, he imagined himself broken against the rocks of that gloomy, listless planet, shivered all to pieces and swept away in the dark tide.

Again he heard himself speaking, as though the voice were not his own: “How can it be anything else?”

“I don’t know.” For a moment Dameron looked as helpless as Hux felt, and seeing the mirror of it frightened him. “But what I felt, what it meant – I know you felt it too.”

Hux felt his mouth tremble, suddenly angry – how _dare_ Dameron do this to him? Take him apart and scatter the pieces with no consideration as to the damage he might be causing? An ache of pressure built in his throat that he tried to swallow around, but it just made him cough instead; he put his hand against his mouth.

“What do you want from me?” His voice emerged ragged, anguished – _weak_. Dameron shook his head.

“I don’t want anything _from_ you,” he said. “This isn’t a transaction, Hugs. And – I’m not gonna force you. You know that. But dammit Hugs – _Armitage_ – “ Hux flinched at the use of his name, but he wasn’t sure if it was from revulsion or because it had sounded like silk in Dameron’s mouth. He watched Dameron swallow, run his tongue over his lower lip as though Hux’s name had tasted sweet.

“You’re in my head, all the time,” Dameron said.

Hux wanted to look away – couldn’t. He wanted to bite the edge of his hand where it pressed, still ungloved, against his mouth – didn’t. He said, his voice creaking and splintering like ice underfoot, “You don’t understand – ”

Dameron made as if to move towards him, saw how Hux stepped back against the counter, seemed to check himself. “Please,” Dameron said, “then _help_ me to.”

He wanted to let Dameron to touch him, more than he had ever wanted anything in his life, but he didn’t. Instead, he told him the truth.

“I was always supposed to go back. To the Order, to what the Order means – I was bred and raised to speak in its voice, and I don’t know any other way. But what you did to me has marked me. I can _never_ go back. I am filled with grief and hunger and fear, yet I have nothing in my possession left to lose, and no right to want for anything, and should not fear death after everything that has happened. I am not like the others now. I was never supposed to regret the actions of the Order, but I do. I regret.”

His face was unaccountably wet, and somehow Dameron was right in front of him now, thumbing a tear-track from Hux’s cheek. It seemed so very easy, so very natural, to lean their foreheads together.

“If you wanted to leave,” Dameron said in the dim, quiet space between their faces, his voice low and rough, “you could. I’d tell them some story, but Leia would understand anyway. We could – drop you off somewhere.”

“I don’t have anywhere _to_ go.”

Dameron’s hand tightened on his, clasping it close over their hearts. “Then don’t. Don’t. Stay with me. We can make it work, figure something out.”

Hux nearly laughed at that, at the simple, guileless _innocence_ of it. Instead he gave something like a sob.

“Hey. Hey.” Dameron slipped one arm around him, his hand resting against Hux’s lower back. His other hand still held Hux’s in a close dancers’ posture, folded into the space where their chests met. Their height difference made it awkward at first, but with Hux leaning back against the counter now, eventually Dameron had gently manoeuvred them so that Hux’s head was sort of tucked under his chin, and Hux could feel Dameron’s mouth against his hair, could hear his voice murmuring nonsense meant to soothe him.

“I’m sorry about your crew,” Dameron said.

“I was supposed to go back,” Hux said again, his voice muffled against Dameron’s shoulder.

“I know,” Dameron said. He was stroking Hux’s back now in slow, tender circles, just between his shoulder blades. “I know.”

The sensation of this, of being held, comforted, was so starkly unfamiliar to Hux that he didn’t know how to respond, and so he merely stood very still in the circle of Dameron’s arms, almost afraid that if he moved this half-dreamed moment would dissolve and shimmer into nothingness around him. Dameron’s skin smelled warm, earthy, sweat and engine oil and his own most atavistic scent, and Hux realised he was very carefully nuzzling his nose into the crook of Dameron’s neck where his scent was fuller, more entirely _his_ , seeking it. Shame suffused Hux’s face with heat but he closed his eyes and buried his face further in Dameron’s neck, wanting to hide from that feeling of guilt, of weakness.

They stood like this for several minutes, neither speaking, the only sound the soft rustle of Dameron’s hand against Hux’s back and Hux’s occasional sniffles. Eventually, once Hux’s breathing slowed and he was vaguely certain that the dampness in his eyes had been satisfactorily resolved, he stirred in Dameron’s arms.

“Tell me what you need,” Dameron said, his voice soft against Hux’s ear.

Hux still couldn’t quite look at him, so much easier to talk with his cheek resting against Dameron’s warm, bare shoulder. “I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “I – I just – ”

The words faltered in his throat. He felt Dameron hold him a little tighter. “It’s okay. We’ll figure it out.”

 _We_.

Dameron shifted slightly, his lips that were still brushing against Hux’s hair pressing a little closer, the light, feathery pressure turning into a kiss. Hux shivered all over, gooseflesh erupting across every inch of his skin. Dameron laughed softly.

“Sorry, kinda ticklish, huh?” He ran both his hands up and down the curve of Hux’s back, before bringing them to rest at Hux’s waist. “Damn, I think I could almost get my fingers to meet around your middle here. If we were back home my dad would be trying to fatten you up.”

“To go in the pot, I’m assuming,” Hux said dryly. He was gratified to hear Dameron chuckle, low in his throat.

“Yeah, that’s Yavin 4 for you – notorious for its cannibals.”

He hesitated, pulling away slightly so he could look Hux in the eye while still holding him. His handsome face was suddenly very earnest. “I didn’t mean that I think you need to put on weight, by the way. I think you’re perfect how you are.”

 _Perfect_? Hux had been striving for perfection his entire life, always, always coming up short in his own head and in the measure of almost everyone else too. He felt as though he had spent a hundred lifetimes wanting to hear that he was _perfect_ in the eyes of the Order. And yet somehow, just now, hearing that word in the mouth of this tricked out Rebel moon jockey was more than he had ever desired.

Not that he would ever have _said_ that. In fact, he was about to reply a little tartly when the floor lurched violently beneath their feet, making Dameron stumble forward against Hux. The nauseating shift was followed by a distant, resonating boom that made the plastic casing of the refresher flex and creak in response.

Dameron was still clutching Hux to him, their eyes fixed on each other in alarm. “Hey, don’t say I don’t ever make the ground move for you, Hugs,” Dameron said breathlessly. “What the hell was _that_?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hux’s “I regret” speech is inspired by Amalthea’s speech in The Last Unicorn, which is probably the crackiest reference I’ve ever done but it felt weirdly fitting.


	15. Redshift

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay buckle up kiddos, cos it's only taken me 15 chapters and 50k odd words, but we've finally reached the actual PLOT of five miles out. this is a bit of a bridging chapter but it was super fun to write. i hope everyone is ok out there.

Poe broke into a run as the _Falcon’s_ proximity alarm began to warble. Up ahead, he saw the silhouette of BB-8 teetering precariously over on one axis as they sped out of an adjoining corridor towards the cockpit tunnel. Poe shouted the droid’s name, and they executed an impressive emergency stop combined with an about-face that swivelled them around to face Poe, chirping an almost incomprehensibly garbled series of high notes as they hurtled towards him.

Poe went down on one knee, reaching out with both hands to grasp BB-8’s dome. “Sith ships doing what in the _who_ now?”

The _Falcon_ rumbled again as the shields flexed under another impact. Poe stood up, reached for Hux’s hand without thinking.

“Come on,” he said.

~

They had passed the first hazard beacon just after noon, Rey told them.

Gathered in the _Falcon’s_ cockpit, they watched in silence as the outline of the ship appeared on the radar and blinked slowly into proximity, until the wreckage itself materialised like a black arrowhead on the horizon, its edges gleaming in the dusty light of a nebula cluster. Whoever had placed the hazard beacons (to warn other passing ships or to try and hide the plunder for themselves) had been diligent in their attempts to cordon off the ruins of the Sith Eternal fleet, but the debris field had been swept along on currents in the same way as the _Finalizer_ , and had dinged the _Falcon_ just off its port side. Rose didn’t think there was much damage; the shields had absorbed most of the impact, the generator holding steady following Rey’s and Hux’s repairs to it, but part of the comms array had been knocked askew and was making the transmitter feed back on itself. They had already set a course back to Jint, but the idea of making the journey without a viable comms unit was worrying. But maybe not quite as worrying as suiting up and venturing outside to fix it, which Rey had already suggested she do. Zero g engineering attempts never ended well in Poe’s experience.

They were all silent as the _Falcon_ cruised nearer the dead ship, Rey in the pilot’s seat dipping one side of the _Falcon_ to track in for a closer look. The Sith vessel was perhaps around a quarter of a mile long, and the dwindling torch of its reactor core pulsed like the seeking lamp of a lighthouse, filling the cockpit with its sulphurous glow.

“Do you think anyone’s in there?” Poe said. “I mean, do Sith need oxygen, or – gravity?”

“Dead ones don’t,” said Finn.

Rose said, “Here’s hoping, anyway.”

The steady wheel and pulse of the light bled across them as they passed, and continued beating its colour against the transparisteel long after they had left it behind. Poe craned to watch the ship’s profile diminish in their wake, until the curve of the _Falcon_ blotted it from view. The Sith ship had been utterly silent in a way that clearly unnerved all of them, not even emitting radio waves that could be heard across the frequency. There was a sense of being led somewhere unfathomable by an insidious guide, a pathfinder into quicksand. When the wreckage was far behind them, Poe leant his weight against the back of the pilot’s chair and kept his eyes on the slow passage of starshine beyond the viewpoint; the light haloed Rose and Hux in profile across from him, painting her hair blue-black, his hair palest gold.

They passed the next wrecked ship in the same silent uneasiness. Poe watched Hux turn his head to follow the shape of it as it loomed into nearness, the depths of his beautiful eyes reflecting the light like fire.

They were about to enter the orbit of the third derelict ship when the _Falcon_ shuddered, once, like a bird shaking rainwater from its feathers. Chewbacca rumbled a warning, and Rey quickly leant forward, tapping something into the console: a small, square reticule lit up and chirped twice in response.

“Turrets,” she said. “Look.”

She was right. At first, Poe didn’t know what he was supposed to be looking at, but as the _Falcon_ swung around and the light of the Sith ship’s reactor dulled slightly, he saw them: rows of antenna-like rods bristling along the edges of the vessel, tipped with greenlit sensors that oscillated restively from left to right, scanning for stray craft. Poe looked at these with interested foreboding, as the _Falcon_ tremored again.

“Kinda, uh, exposed out here, aren’t we?” he said, trying to keep his voice light. It wasn’t that he doubted Rey’s skill as a pilot; it was just almost physically painful for him to not be at the controls himself.

Hux had stepped into the space between the nav seat and the pilot’s chair. He was at Rey’s side again now, straight-backed, suddenly authoritative, his face washed in starlight.

“Stay on this trajectory,” he said. “The cloaking device won’t be detected at this range if they still have an active interdiction field.”

It took several seconds for the words to settle in Poe’s mind. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Just hold on for a second there. This ship is _way_ too small for a cloaking device.”

Both Hux and Rey turned their heads in almost perfect unison to look at him. Poe looked back, disbelieving.

“What have you two been up to?” he demanded, half delighted, half offended that neither had told him.

Rey gave a sidelong sort of grin. “The general shared some blueprints with me. It didn’t take much work to adapt them from the whisper prototype.”

Hux said, sounding almost diffident, evasive, “It was a goodwill gesture.” He shook his head slightly as he said it, as though the concept of having equipped a Resistance ship with First Order tech was too alien for him to entirely believe of himself.

Poe grinned. “ _See_ ,” he said, shifting so that he was leaning closer to Hux, speaking only to him, “I _knew_ you could be nice.”

Hux glared at him. “I didn’t do it for _you_.”

Poe mimed a dramatic clutch of his heart. “My X-Wing’s getting jealous, Hugs.”

Hux’s cheeks were very pink. “Well, next time it’s going toe-to-toe with a Sith dreadnaught, maybe I will consider it a worthy project.”

“Promises, promises.”

“Shut up.”

Rey brought the _Falcon_ in closer, tucking the starboard side down to skim what felt like less than a hundred meters from the Sith ship, almost seeming to dare the turrets to pick them out of the sky. From this distance, Poe could look at the broad hull of the thing, and realised he could discern little portholes dotted along its side which had presumably been used for maintenance workers to access the exterior of the ship. Did Sith have mechanics? Engineers? Did they use the Dark side to hold their spanners for them? He imagined them in their protective anti-grav suits, maybe all equipped with black cloaks to really pull the whole look together, plucking their way along the external catwalks like nefarious termites.

They passed three more turreted dreadnaughts over the next half an hour, and each vessel’s interdiction field struggled with the _Falcon’_ s new cloaking device, attempting to force it back into visibility. Rey grew more grimly uncommunicative, her hands moving swiftly over the console as she manoeuvred against some impulsive outside force. One especially fearsome attempt at latching onto the _Falcon’s_ mainframe elicited an erratic grinding noise from the ship’s undercarriage, and BB-8 whistled uneasily. Poe was reminded, not for the first time, of the _Falcon’s_ considerable vintage.

“Is this thing going to hold together, do you think?” Finn said.

“I thought you were feeling a bit softer towards the _Falcon_ these days,” Rose said.

“Yeah, but I still kind of expect it to get a puncture in the middle of a firefight.”

"I put the scavver in forward cargo. He can stick his finger in the hole if we need him to."

Chewie growled, but it wasn’t in defence of the _Falcon’s_ honour. Rey sat forward quickly, her hands flying over the console where a second signal had popped into view at the bottom right hand corner of the radar screen and was heading towards the _Falcon_ with unerring rapidity.

“ _Shit_ ,” Rey hissed. Chewie warbled an equivalent in Shyriiwook.

“What the hell’s that?” said Poe, as the signal began to pulse with its gaining proximity. Rey didn’t reply, but disengaged the autopilot and pulled up the ship’s manual control column, closing her hands on either side of the yoke and settling herself into it. A loose strand of her hair fell over her forehead, and she brushed it back with an impatient gesture.

“ _Rey_ ,” said Finn, insistent. “What’s going on?”

“That last ship still had its automated defence system online,” Rey said. She glanced up towards the top of the viewpoint as though at an imaginary rear-view mirror. The blip on the radar was tracking them with the precision of a missile. “We’ve got company.”

“I thought his cloaking thing was keeping us out of sight,” Finn said. He jerked his head at Hux, who straightened crossly.

“This isn’t the time for your personal vendetta.”

The glance Finn gave him was cursory with disdain. “Don’t worry, I don’t just have a problem with you _personally_.”

“Stars, _not now_.” Rey reached for the straps of the safety harness hanging either side of the pilot’s chair and snapped them into place. “Everybody get those on,” she said.

“Rey – ” Poe began, but the ship leapt forward like a greyhound from the stocks, jolting the question from his mouth and flattening him back against the seat. The force was such that he had to wrest his own arms from where they’d become pinned against the armrests, fighting against the violence of the ship’s flight to grip the clasps of the belt and shove them into place across his body. BB-8 shrieked, turtling into their dome as they were sent rolling backwards out of the cockpit. Poe was aware even as the _Falcon_ tore forward that Rey wasn’t allowing it full rein; there was a sense of a great power straining against a shackling hand, as though Rey was holding the tossing head of a foaming thoroughbred at bay, its teeth gnashing against the bit that restrained it. Poe looked across at Hux, who had just managed to buckle himself into the other nav seat, his face white and set, his eyes fierce. Just beyond him through the port side window, a silhouette swam onto the periphery of the _Falcon_ , but when Poe tried to look past Hux to focus on it, Rey released the air brakes.

Poe felt as though the oxygen had been swept from the helpless chambers of his lungs, the speed of the acceleration not so much a force now as a sensation of blinding weightlessness, as white lights bloomed behind his eyes and he almost laughed with the reckless power of it, drunk with adrenaline. As much as he would rather be grappling with the controls himself, Rey and the _Falcon_ sang together like particles in an aurora. Outside, Poe could see the stars beginning to blur, the pools of light in the depths of the void streaking past like comet tails. The inside of the cockpit swam with colour.

A metallic burst of sound brought Poe back into himself, the unmistakeable noise of the ship’s barriers deflecting blaster fire. He pushed himself around, trying to see out of the port side window again, but the disorientation of the movement was so intense that he briefly saw double. He was _really_ not used to being a passenger during a dogfight.

“Thoughts on engaging, skipper?” He winced as the barriers reverberated again.

“Naturally, I’d love to,” Rey said. “But that thing’s an unmanned drone. If we try and match it pace for pace, the velocity will shear us in half.”

“If you can jump to lightspeed, the encryption key will stop it from following us through hyperspace,” Hux said, his voice sharp.

“Okay,” Rey said. “Okay. Finn, I need you on the quad guns. Try and get us some room.”

“On it.” Finn unstrapped himself from the auxiliary seat and headed for the door, stumbling as the _Falcon_ pitched again dizzily. Within seconds, he was returning fire, his voice crackling over the internal comms.

“Rey, this thing’s like a kriffing hornet, I can’t get a bead on it.”

“The shields will hold for now,” Hux said, seeming to address Finn as much as Rey. “We need _space_ , not a direct hit.”

“I _know_ that.” Another impact against the barriers. More return fire. Finn made a frustrated sound.

“Rey, I need you to drop back. Let it overtake. I’ll see if I can side-swipe it.”

“ _No_ ,” Hux snapped. “It has automated targeting. If you allow it to lock onto us, it will impede our ability to jump to lightspeed.”

“Fuck. _Fuck_. Not losing this thing, Rey.”

“Come on, let's show it our tail lights.” Rey flexed the fingers of one hand and pulled out the throttle; there was a tremendous plunging sound, as though the ship’s engines had been briefly put into reverse, and gravity suddenly seemed to _whoosh_ out from under them as the _Falcon_ began to turn on its side. A blaze of orange on the horizon was briefly visible as the ship barrel-rolled hard to starboard, and a loose pair of boots flew past Poe’s head, nearly hitting Chewie who bellowed in protest.

“ _Sorry_ ,” Rey shouted. “They’ve got steel caps.”

Rose said, “Kriffing _terra firma_ up ahead!”

Poe saw it, and then didn’t see it, as the ship arced over on its side again. They seemed to be plummeting towards that same flare of orange that he realised now was a planet’s sun, toppling end over end, and he was almost too dizzy to process the sight of the planet itself as its distant blue shape was briefly visible – then not – then visible again, in the viewpoint – growing less distant all the time. Like a shot bird, the _Falcon_ tumbled towards it.

Chewie roared: the shields were at fifty percent. From the gun turret, Finn gave a yell.

“Brace for deceleration.” Rey punched at the console. “We’ve taken damage. _Shit_.”

The _Falcon’s_ proximity sensors were going off again, overwhelmingly loud in the cockpit, the anti-grav generators trying to kick in and failing in immediate succession. The walls of the ship began to rattle as the heat of the planet’s atmosphere built – Poe felt the edges of his consciousness beginning to black out as the _Falcon_ plunged into another deadly barrel roll.

“Losing altitude – ” Rey's voice, as though from a great distance. Poe tried to look for Hux, couldn’t see him against the blaze of light.

“ _Rey_!”

The _Falcon_ broke atmosphere in a shower of flame.


	16. Dead Reckoning

“There is a lot of fire! Everything is _on_ fire!”

Hux came back to himself with the sensation that he was teetering precariously on the verge of weightlessness, as though gravity had briefly unhinged him from the ground. He blinked, shaking his head, furiously trying to rattle his thoughts back into line, and as his vision began to stabilise he realised that he was in fact half-suspended about five feet in the air, held in place by the _Falcon’s_ nav seat safety harness.

The _Falcon_ – which seemed to be currently hanging on its side. Which seemed to be very much on fire.

Somebody was still shouting in an extremely obnoxious way.

Hux bared his teeth and grasped the safety harness with both hands, tugging at the release mechanism. _Let go, let **go**._ His own weight was holding it taut, stopping it from releasing, and he tried to shift his position in the nav seat so he wasn’t leaning so far forward, trying to wriggle his fingers beneath the strap so he could gain purchase enough to free himself. He growled with frustration, kicking his legs, his nails clawing at the release catch. Smoke was beginning to make his eyes sting and water.

“Hugs!” Dameron was suddenly right in front of him, his hands joining Hux’s to grasp at the safety harness. He tugged while Hux twisted, pushing his weight away from the constraint of the straps. With a sudden _snap_ , the harness released, jolting Hux forward into empty air – then into Dameron’s arms.

“You are IN the fire! You are ON fire!” Dameron was batting at the sleeve of Hux’s coat and at first Hux tried to wrest himself out of his grip, before he realised the hem of his coat was smouldering and his sleeve was partially alight, with Dameron slapping at it with his open hand while he kept his other arm around Hux, propping Hux against him as Hux struggled to regain his feet – this was getting very tiresome and Dameron was going to _burn himself_ –

Then – a staccato hissing sound, gouts of freezing white fog – someone was firing a smoke extinguisher _right at him_ – great stars, the _indignity_ of this –

Finn peered at them through the receding trails of nitrogen, extinguisher in hand. His expression was incredulous.

“What the hell is wrong with you two?” he said.

~

They had come down on the edge of an escarpment that plunged several hundred feet into a ravine. It seemed to be part of a much larger mountain range running the circumference of a vast glacial valley, with a distant river snaking crosswise along the valley floor fed by a single dagger-white waterfall to the west. Across from them, the mountains reared up precipitously towards the sky, their lower reaches striated by boulders where dense woodland gave way to outcrops of rocky bluff. Smoke coiled to the east, evidence of a settlement of some kind, though before someone could locate the binoculars in the jumbled assortment of _stuff_ they had managed to salvage from the _Falcon_ , it would be impossible to discern anything more useful.

The _Falcon_ itself was in a bad way. The sprinkler system had finally remembered to kick in, but the ship was still smouldering, smoke from the haemorrhaging fuel tanks painting streaks of grey across the sky and signalling their location as effectively as a beacon. The Wookiee was roaring in a pitiful sort of way because, so far as Hux could tell, his bowcaster was missing amidst the disarray inside the ship. Finn had been engaged in a half-argument with him for the past twenty minutes because the Wookiee kept trying to go back onto the _Falcon_ to look for it; his fur was still smoking from the last attempt and he smelled disconcertingly like singed dog.

Dameron’s astromech droid had lost part of its antenna in the crash, which he was currently trying to jury-rig with a piece of wire he had salvaged from the ship itself, all the while crooning to the droid like it was his weakling firstborn. It was an entirely disproportionate reaction, Hux thought irritably; the only reason bits of them weren’t currently scattered across several hundred miles of the planet’s surface was due to Rey’s skill as a pilot. He sighed as he moved to stand over Dameron and the droid, looking down at them.

“That one won’t work,” he said. “Its fibre-optics are too exposed.”

“Hugs.” Dameron paused in what he was doing to rub a hand over his face. “This isn’t really the time. I’m just trying to do a temporary fix.”

“I realise that.” Hux swept back the tails of his coat and knelt beside Dameron and the droid, who swivelled their head to peer up at him and chirped sadly. “But you’ll be doing them more harm than good by using that – the amount of feedback will overwhelm their system and make navigation very difficult for them.”

There was a grimy smear of soot on Dameron’s forehead that Hux very much wanted to stroke away. Dameron shook his head, looking briefly helpless, his gaze on the droid.

“Buddy, I’m sorry – ”

The patch of grass Hux was kneeling on was damp and presently soaking through his trouser leg, but he didn’t want to move because his elbow was brushing against Dameron’s in a way that felt almost scandalously intimate considering they were in full view of the others, but which also felt – _good_ , so good that he wanted to shift a little closer so he could more fully feel the warmth of Dameron’s skin through his shirt sleeve. He also found himself wanting to put his hand over Dameron’s where it rested against BB-8’s dome, but instead he reached to pluck the temporary wire free, turning it between his fingers thoughtfully.

“There may be a way of – well, I suppose lagging it, in a way, to prevent signal flood. I’ll see what I can do.”

The droid jiggled a little on their base, beeping at him excitedly. “Ah,” Hux said, smiling. “That might be a little beyond my capabilities, I’m afraid.”

“Hugs.” Dameron was looking at him, his expression open with gratitude in a way that made Hux feel as though his heart had briefly loosed itself in his chest. “Thank you.”

Hux gave a single, small nod. “Of course.”

Dameron turned back to the droid, flexing the fingers of his free hand in a stiff, hesitant way. The movement drew Hux’s attention and for the first time he realised that Dameron’s hand was burnt – not badly but certainly painfully, the skin of his palm tight and shiny with the beginnings of a blister forming. He must have done it when he had rescued Hux from the _Falcon_ , probably when he had used his _own hand_ to put out the flames on Hux’s sleeve – the ridiculous, kriffing _fool_.

“You’re hurt,” he said, more sharply than he intended. Dameron looked at him, and then at his hand, as though the fact of his injury was a surprise to him.

“Oh. Yeah. Burned it a bit. It’s okay, though.” He grinned at Hux in a way that Hux found annoyingly disarming. “Still got all my feeling in it.”

Hux felt his mouth quiver at the edges with the urge to smile, managed to turn it into a scowl instead. “I’m sure. But if you don’t clean it and have it properly treated, it will become infected.”

Dameron fairly preened at that. “Are you actually worried about me, Hugs?”

“Stop being so wilfully _absurd_ ,” Hux ground out, feeling his face beginning to warm with a treacherous blush. “You will be even less use to us than normal if you lose a hand.”

“Damn, high praise coming from you. I’ll have to put this in the diary.”

Hux’s lip curled. “Just _do something_ with it, would you?”

They put together a ramshackle little camp. Hux had half-expected the scavver to make a run for it as soon as the rest of them were distracted, but he loitered on the edges of the group as Rey and Poe built up the fire and silently accepted a swallow from the flask of water Finn handed around. He still hadn’t spoken a word since the _Finalizer_. Part of Hux wanted to question him about it, to ask him what he had seen. But the scavver’s eyes still had the flat, blank look of some recent, unprocessed trauma, a look that Hux recognised, and he couldn’t quite bring himself to broach the subject with him.

The water flask reached Hux last in its rotation round the group. He eyed its progress towards him with a mixture of distaste and impatience; it was frankly repellent that they had let the scav drink from the same flask as them at all – he could be riddled with any _manner_ of diseases and yet none of the others seemed to care a whit, cheerfully putting their lips to the mouth of the flask and drinking one after the other. It was bad enough Hux was going to have to share the flask with everyone else as it was. If he weren’t so thirsty, he would have refused it, had half a mind to refuse it anyway. But – _oh_. Dameron was drinking from it now, and Hux’s gaze was drawn hungrily to the smooth motion of his throat as he took a single swallow from the flask, the dip and bob of his Adam’s apple, the way he ran his tongue across his lower lip to catch the residue of the water as he lowered the flask. Hux swallowed at the same time as Dameron swallowed, as though he could feel how Dameron’s mouth felt, could taste how Dameron’s mouth tasted drenched in water. The fact that he knew, precisely, how his mouth would feel, how his mouth would taste, had committed to every sinew of his memory the exact pressure of Dameron’s lips against his own, made the piercing, yearning _frustration_ of it no easier to bear – worse in fact, because he realised now that he wanted to _feel_ and to _taste_ Dameron again, and wanted more – _wanted_ – in a way Hux could never recall wanting anything in his life. He had wanted things before, of course – wanted power, wanted success, wanted _safety_ – but this was different. This was a want that lived like a fever beneath his flesh, that made his fingers twitch at his sides and his skin quicken as though a breath had passed across it – made heat stir between his legs as though his entire body was agape with need at the sight of Dameron’s beauty. He wanted Dameron’s mouth on him again – wanted him to prise Hux open, so gently, to loosen him with careful, tender laps, drawing deeper and deeper with every stroke of his tongue until –

This was _completely_ beneath his dignity.

“No. Thank you,” he said quickly, as Dameron made to hand the flask across to him. He was admittedly parched, but the idea of drinking from the flask while Dameron’s lips were still wet from it, in full sight of everyone else as though Hux were laying his shameful, desperate desires bare for their perusal, was almost intolerable. He was glad of the heavy fall of his coat to hide how his body betrayed him, and he turned away slightly, plucking at his coat further.

“You okay, kiddo?” He flinched at Dameron’s voice before he could stop himself, tried to disguise it as a shiver. Dameron nodded towards the fire, his eyes on Hux, his expression searching.

“Gonna join us?”

~

“How long after we’re overdue can we expect a rescue?” Finn said, not sounding entirely convinced by the question.

Tico scuffed the heel of her boot in the dirt. “Seventeen days. Give or take, I guess. They’re not exactly going to panic if we’re not punctual.”

“If they can even find us,” Dameron said. “The transmitter’s fritzed all to hell and back.”

He was still fiddling with the broken stem of antenna on BB-8’s dome and Hux wanted to snap at him to leave it alone because he was going to hurt the droid more if he wasn’t careful, but BB-8 kept leaning into Dameron’s leg like a small, warmth-questing animal, and the motion of Dameron’s hand was so tender that Hux suddenly found that he didn’t have the heart to tell him off for it.

“Our last location will have pinged before the servers went out.” It was the first time Rey had spoken since the crash. She was standing slightly apart from the rest of them, her back to the dusk-gathering sky. “Leia and Konnix will be able to trace it. But I’m going to get us out of here before they need to.”

“She’s gonna take one hell of a fix, Rey,” Dameron said, his gaze moving towards the _Falcon_. The Wookiee warbled plaintively; he still hadn’t found his bowcaster.

“I know.” There was an edge to Rey’s voice that Hux hadn’t heard before. She was holding one of her hands slightly behind her, and from his position he could see how her fingers tightened into a tense fist at Dameron’s words. “This is my responsibility. We don’t need to stretch Resistance resources any further than they already are.”

“That town in the valley,” Tico said. “Maybe we could see if we can trade with them for parts, at least get the radio fixed.”

“ _If_ they’re friendly,” Finn said.

“Kinda announced our arrival with that rough landing,” Dameron said. “Everyone in a hundred-mile radius probably knows we’re here.”

“He’s right,” Hux said, meaning Finn, who glanced at him as though he was as surprised to hear Hux saying the words as Hux was to be speaking them. “We have no idea what allegiance, custom, _predilection_ , the inhabitants of this planet may have. At any rate we should prepare ourselves for indifference to assisting us at best, outright hostility at worst.”

“Easy with the optimism there, Hugs,” Dameron said.

“What would you rather I say? That I expect them to welcome us with open arms?”

Finn sighed. “At least the air’s breathable. Shit, this is like Jakku all over again.”

“Better views though,” Dameron said, shielding his eyes to look across the valley towards where mist was gathering amongst the dense woodland at the foot of the mountain. “Those trees decid – decidu – something something?”

Choosing to excuse himself from any more examples of Dameron’s nature expertise, Hux instead followed Rey towards the edge of the escarpment. Far beneath them, the river glittered like a ribbon along the valley floor. In the distance there sounded a single, lonely call of some wolf-like creature, echoing in the vastness of the gathering dark.

“None of this is your fault,” Hux said quietly.

She didn’t look at him, instead keeping her gaze angled towards where pinpricks of light were discernible set into the deepest bruise of shadow at the valley’s heart: the settlement, or whatever it might be, shoring up for the night.

“The _Falcon_ ,” she said, “isn’t mine to let harm come to.”

Hux frowned. He knew, of course, to whom the ship had belonged. Quite frankly, he couldn’t imagine why anyone would wish to be victim to its inheritance; the _Falcon_ was an unreliable bucket of nails that occasionally flew fast enough to get itself out of trouble, so far as he could see. Precisely why Ren had never entertained any discernible aspirations towards claiming it as his own. But it clearly meant something to the Resistance, and to Rey in particular.

“Did Solo forget to alter his will?” He couldn’t keep the acid out of his voice, even as he suspected he was overstepping some line of sanctified Rebel propriety. But Rey grinned at him, sidelong.

“Kylo could have fought me for it,” she said. “I’d have won.”

 _That’s my girl_ , Hux thought reflexively, surprising himself. He smiled in a pleased, malicious sort of way.

“Well,” he said, “it appears to be your great misfortune to own the thing now.”

She was silent for a moment. In the distance there came that wolf-like cry again, pitched mournfully against the rising wind.

“I don’t think I’ve earned it,” she said at last, slowly, as though she were working her thoughts out as she spoke. “I don’t think I have. But I will.”

“And what prerequisites must be met for you to _earn_ it?”

“To prove that I’m not what they think I am.”

Hux lifted an eyebrow. “They?”

She moved her shoulders, almost a shrug. “The Resistance, I suppose.”

“Why is proving yourself so important?”

“Because the Resistance tells itself stories. About the past, about the galaxy. It had stories about me, before. Now most people just look at me like I’m a stranger. And they have different stories now.”

“They don’t know you,” he said. “You know you.”

She turned her head then to look at him, her expression opaque. For a moment she seemed to consider him, unblinking, before something shifted in her face and she smiled, that hard, cool evasiveness behind her eyes seeming to soften and fall away.

“Do you think they’ll eat us, if we ask for help?” She indicated the lights of the settlement with her head, her smile conspiratorial now.

“Ah.” Hux smiled too, and their smiles caught on one another and grew. “ _Naturally_. Almost _certainly_.”

Rey nodded in mock solemnity. “I thought so. Boiled or fried?”

“Oh boiled for you Rebel types, I imagine you all run very tough,” Hux quipped. Rey’s answering grin brought a dimple out in her cheek.

“Don’t worry, general, I’ll make sure you and Poe can share the same pot,” she said, winking rakishly as she began to move past him, and at her words Hux felt the blush overcome him as quickly, as suddenly as, they said, it took to fall in love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finn and Rose's 'seventeen days' exchange is a reference to the Ripley, Hudson and Hicks dialogue in Aliens.


	17. Liminal Spaces

His back was hurting him.

The First Order had not always been diligent when it came to the physical health of its people. In fact, this transition was something Hux himself had overseen once he achieved the rank of general and acquired enough authority to reinstate changes to what, all told, was an archaic and unforgiving system still based very much in outdated Empire traditions. There was altogether too much arrogant showboating for his liking, a sort of ignorant, gloating machismo that he found entirely distasteful and frankly dangerous. There was nothing to be gained from pretending that one was impervious to illness or physical harm, after all. His alterations had been subtle but wide-ranging: yearly physicals for all officers and soldiers, a thorough immunisation programme, medical check-ups available as and when they were required. It was also, crucially, free of charge; previous iterations of First Order health care had seen crewmembers forced to pay for any treatment out of their own wage packets, a concept Hux found utterly repellent and entirely unjust.

The results were not especially visible, though he did notice a worrying uptick in the number of mental health concerns among some of the younger soldiers. He hypothesized that this was probably more to do with reports actually being filed for once and self-advocation becoming the norm rather than an outlier or indulgence, which was what some of those old Imperial fossils had complained to him about when he had first mooted the idea. It wasn’t an absence of resilience, he had argued back; they were _youths_ , children some of them. Either way, Hux was vaguely satisfied. It had been a long time coming.

His own health was a longstanding complication. As a child he had been _sickly_ (his father’s word): pneumonia nearly killing him twice before he became a teenager, which had left him with a susceptibility to chest colds as an adult that persisted to this day. Under his new regime, his own visits to medbay tended towards the responsible rather than the frequent – only when entirely necessary. Yet his health persisted along those lines of complication – allergies, bladder infections, acid reflux, a persistent stomach ulcer for which the _Finalizer’s_ medical officer had recommended _relaxation_ – a concept so preposterous that Hux almost had the doctor reassigned. Still, it took several of these routine medical examinations for the cause of his persistent back pain to be discovered: a badly healed vertebra from an impacted fracture well over two decades old. At some point in his childhood he had literally broken his back, and it had gone entirely unnoticed.

Which was to _say_ , he told himself now, crossly, as he picked his way along the dark, dripping crew quarters, feeling his way by touch as much as moving by sight, Dameron and his ridiculously cavalier attitude towards his injured hand were a liability none of them could afford. He needed disinfectant on it at the very least, something to seal out dirt and prevent sepsis. Dameron may bluster his way through the injury all he liked; Hux was going to fix it for him, thank you very much.

He found what he was looking for in the little compartment under one of the narrow bunks, drawing a hiss of triumph between his teeth as his fingers closed around the outline of the medkit. He held it close to his face so he could inspect it in the darkness. The lettering on the side of the kit was tiny, and in the dim light and without his reading glasses he couldn’t quite discern its expiry date, but the seal seemed to be intact at least. There, standing in the dark where no one could see him, his head inclined over the little box, Hux smiled to himself.

He was nearly at the entrance to the boarding ramp when a pair of extremely large paws seized him by the collar and flung him against the durasteel wall, nearly lifting him off his feet. Hux tried and failed to swallow a shriek of surprise, his head jolting painfully back against the wall. He fumbled for the medkit, nearly dropping it. The Wookiee glowered down at him; he seemed to be making a point of showing his teeth.

Hux, trying to recover some of his dignity, snarled back at him. “Would you get _off_ me?”

The Wookiee tossed his head, growling. Hux had always had something of an ear for languages but Shyriiwook was a blind spot of his; all the same, he had picked up some of the Wookiee dialect listening to the others conversing with this _Chewbacca_ , and so while he was far from fluently understanding what in Sith hell the overgrown floormat was caterwauling on about, he was able to just about translate the overall gist. Still dangling in the Wookiee’s grasp, Hux glared up at him furiously.

“Listen you great hairy beast, I have had plenty of opportunities to betray you all so far. I am going to use _this_ – ” he brandished the medkit meaningfully – “to treat Dameron’s _hand_. Yes? Do. You. Understand?”

The Wookiee roared reprovingly and thrust Hux away from him, making Hux stumble as he tried to find his feet again. He was clutching the medkit to his chest now like it was some sort of treasured plunder; he’d be damned if the Wookiee thought he was going to relinquish it.

“What are _you_ doing anyway?” Hux said, unable to quite keep the sneer out of his voice. He looked past the Wookiee into the darkness of the _Falcon_ , before glancing back at him. “ _Loitering_ on the ship?”

The Wookiee roared something along the lines of “Mind your own business” (Hux suspected there was an expletive in there somewhere), before he turned and lumbered back down the corridor, out of sight. Probably still looking for his ridiculous bowcaster – well, at least the ship wasn’t on fire to singe him like a hearthrug anymore. Even though no one could see him, Hux fussed with his clothing, put his shoulders back, straightened his spine – his back gave another twinge of protest, followed by a little _pop_ – and the discomfort subsided again.

Dameron had volunteered for first watch (not that anyone else appeared to be sleeping judging by Finn and Tico’s voices near the fire and Rey’s silhouette slightly beyond them), and so Hux headed in the direction he had gone. The escarpment formed itself into a sort of natural chokepoint where an outcropping of rock met the cliff edge; anyone wishing to take them by surprise would have to go through this section and whoever happened to be standing guard. Dameron had gone slightly beyond the curve of the outcropping and out of sight of the camp, which Hux found enormously irritating. Typical of Dameron to not consider that he was making himself vulnerable by venturing off like that, even if he did have the droid with him. _Especially_ as he had the droid with him; BB-8 was still damaged and not in a fit state to be useful should they come under attack.

He couldn’t see Dameron at first, which made him anxious, which in turn annoyed him even more. It was darker than he had anticipated, and his eyes were struggling to adjust to the moonlight washing everything in painterly silver. Then he spotted BB-8’s outline near a tree that stood sentry at the cliff edge, and realised he could hear Dameron’s voice, very low, speaking softly to the droid. He was sitting in a little alcove formed by where the tree’s roots erupted from the earth, his blaster propped across his knees while he worked a cloth along its casing. There was a tin of gun oil open at his feet.

BB-8 spotted Hux first, trilling a rising series of notes that was half-greeting, half an alert to Dameron that his _friend_ was here. The droid’s binary was curiously accented in a way that Hux suspected was some form of Resistance slang, and it took him a moment to parse what was meant by the _friend_ designation. When he finally did, he felt his face grow hot and found himself briefly grateful for the disguising darkness, until he caught his foot on one of the tree roots and nearly tipped over right into Dameron’s lap. This time he _did_ drop the medkit. Dameron was on his feet in a moment, his arms around Hux to steady him before Hux even had time to gasp – Dameron was _grinning_ , the absolute _nerve_ of the man –

“Whoa, you okay there, Hugs? Seriously, I rescue you from a burning ship once and next thing I know you’re throwing yourself at me.”

This was the second time Hux had found himself being crudely manhandled in less than ten minutes. Wookiee-handled. Whatever. It was vexing in the extreme. Not that he was exactly struggling to escape now. Dameron smelled better than the furry lunk at least – well, slightly better. Hux twitched irritably in Dameron’s arms but made no attempt to pull free. His hand was resting on the defined undulation of Dameron’s pectoral muscle where it was outlined beneath his shirt, and he found that he was quite unable to move it away.

“What are you _doing_ out here?” he snapped.

A flurry of amusement passed across Dameron’s face. “Well, I’ve currently got my arms around this really cute redhead – ”

Hux hissed. “Do I look like a complete imbecile to you, Dameron?”

“I don’t know, you’re standing really close – it’s hard to tell.”

Hux lifted his chin, looking imperiously down the length of his nose at him. He was struggling not to smile; Dameron made him _want_ to smile. “How dare you,” he said, affecting his best Imperial cut glass. “I come here to help you and all you do is insult me.”

At some point Dameron had shifted his posture so that his stance was no longer merely salvaging Hux from a fall, but intimate, reverential, holding him in the way you hold a precious thing, his hands flat where they rested against Hux’s back, clasping Hux’s upper body gently while their lower bodies were drawn together. Both Hux’s own hands still lay against Dameron’s chest, and he could feel the solid, steady beat of his heart beneath his palm. It felt good. It felt – _safe_.

“So, uh.” Dameron’s voice was low, his hands on the move again, coming to rest at Hux’s waist. In the moonlight his face was inexpressibly tender. “What were you gonna help me with?”

Hux wet his lips. He wanted to urge Dameron’s hands downwards, wanted to feel his capable, clever fingers explore every inch of him. The sweet-pain of longing matched the hot pressure of his pulse pinpointed between his legs, and in the dark Dameron was all eyes and mouth, and seeking hands, and the soft, low murmur of his voice. He swallowed, hard, pulled himself back. It took longer than usual to envisage the subtle, swift severance of his mind from the needs of his body, but he just about managed it. There were important matters to attend to.

All the same, his own voice was a raspy, a little wavering, when he said, “Your hand. Let me look at it.”

Dameron moved his hands away from Hux’s waist, held them up in a surrender attitude, turning the palms towards Hux. “Like what you see?”

“Not in the slightest.” Hux stooped to retrieve the fallen medkit, using his fingernails to begin working the lid free. “I’m going to put something on that burn of yours.”

Dameron gave him the sloppiest and most imprecise salute Hux had ever had the misfortune of witnessing. “Yes _sir_. You know, you are insanely sexy when you boss me around like this.”

Hux’s sneer of contempt was entirely undermined by the blush he could feel working its way across his cheeks. “Just sit down and do as you’re told for once.”

They settled in the same little alcove, beneath the tree’s canopy. Hux took his coat off and spread it next to him so he could arrange the tools he required in the order he would need them: disinfectant to clean his own hands before he touched Dameron’s, a little tube of antibiotic ointment, scissors, a roll of sterile dressing. He was pleased by how thorough the contents of the kit were; he imagined that Han Solo’s idea of battlefield medicine had largely amounted to sloshing whiskey on a blaster wound.

When he was ready, he turned to Dameron. “Now, let me see – ”

The burn was concentrated towards the fleshy part below Dameron’s thumb, the blister having formed and popped several times thanks to Dameron’s carelessness. In the moonlight the skin looked reddened, wet-looking. Dameron hissed between his teeth as Hux began to apply the ointment.

“Ow,” he whispered.

Hux resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “You’ve walked off worse, Dameron.”

“I barely felt it before you starting putting that stuff on.”

Hux flicked him a glance. “Maybe I just like causing you pain.”

Once he was satisfied the ointment had been adequately applied, he trimmed off a skein of dressing and rested Dameron’s hand against his thigh, pressing the sterile pad of the dressing against the burn.

“Hold that,” he said, passing Dameron one loose end of the dressing before he wrapped the other end around Dameron’s hand twice, keeping it loose, trimmed off a little more excess, then knotted the two ends together.

“There,” Hux said, admiring his handiwork. “ _Much_ better. That’s one less thing that is likely to kill you at least.”

Dameron held his bandaged hand up to his face, examining it curiously. “Damn, you’re pretty good at this, Hugs.”

Hux scoffed at that. “It’s hardly a surgical intervention, Dameron.”

“No, I mean it.” Dameron lowered his hand, reaching his uninjured one across with an unthinking kind of spontaneity to touch Hux’s cheek. “You did good. Thank you.”

His hand was very warm, the edge of his thumb rough and callused and delicious against Hux’s face. Hux swallowed, feeling something stumble inside him. “You’re quite welcome.”

Dameron wasn’t taking his hand away. His eyes were suddenly very serious. “You’re so gorgeous,” he said.

Hux flinched back at that, not quite enough for Dameron’s hand to leave his face. “Don’t,” he said.

Dameron’s hand did move then, to Hux’s hair. He feathered it back very gently, his touch careful, cautious, asking permission. “You are so pretty,” he said, again with that solemn weight in his voice. “You are so beautiful.”

“Dameron – ” Hux said, hearing his own voice hitch. It was all – so _much_.

He watched, captivated, as Dameron’s lips parted as he breathed out. In the moonlight he looked older somehow, and graver with it, his gaze focused on Hux’s face with such precision that Hux felt as though he had been stripped bare, as though Dameron could see beneath every carefully cultivated layer he had ever created to defend himself, right down to the twisted, hurting, desperate heart beneath. He _wanted_ Dameron, with such intensity that he felt he might drown in it. It frightened him. To feel, to yearn like this – it made him vulnerable in a way that he had promised himself he would never be, and yet he didn’t want it to stop, didn’t want Dameron to move away as their faces ghosted closer to one another, Hux’s own hand coming up almost unwillingly to cup Dameron’s jaw, his stubble an exquisite texture beneath Hux’s sensitive fingertips. His other hand moved too, joining the first as though compelled by some force external to Hux’s body. Very slowly, his hands arched so just the very tips of his fingers were guided, Hux mapped the contours of Dameron’s face: cautiously, reverently, gliding across the cupid’s-bow of Dameron’s mouth, pressing lightly against the pillowy softness of his lower lip; his index fingers tracing the outline of Dameron’s jaw, meeting together at the tender little dimple in his chin; stroking slowly up again, tracing the strong profile of his nose and smoothing outwards across his cheeks. Dameron closed his eyes as Hux brushed his fingertips gently across the lids, feeling the whisper of Dameron’s lashes; upwards again, and he stroked across Dameron’s forehead, across each eyebrow in turn, then across the skin of his brow, across the lines worn there from Dameron frowning in concentration, in thought, in sorrow. Hux wanted to kiss those lines, every one a moment of Dameron’s past that he suddenly longed to know; but instead his hands moved higher, sliding into the thick, silky warmth of Dameron’s hair as Hux had yearned to do a thousand, thousand times before.

It felt as natural, as easy – as falling asleep – as dying, to rest their foreheads together, to guide his mouth against Dameron’s, their tongues meeting in slow, careful, tender conjunction. At some point Hux found himself in Dameron’s lap, compelled by Dameron or himself or by a synchonicity of their two bodies, and he could feel how Dameron wanted him too.

He felt as though every scene of his life had been simply working towards this singular moment: towards a beginning as much as an ending, towards the sensation of Dameron’s hands in his hair and his mouth burning a path across his skin, towards a belonging and a safety that had only been as fiction to Hux before now, under this tree, borne along the tides of the galaxy by this strange planet, the vivid rightness and sense of peace of this, his place in Dameron’s arms, as certain as anything Hux had ever known.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realise the way this chapter ends might seem like it's the end of the fic -- it's not! I just wanted a little bit of gingerpilot fluff to tide us over.


	18. The Gloaming

By dawn the following morning, the scavver had vanished.

The flurry of panic to ascertain whether he had taken anything with him was short-lived: rations and weapons were all accounted for, and the _Falcon_ itself seemed in no worse a state than they had left it the night before.

“Guess he didn’t like our company,” Rose said.

“I hope the wildlife is friendly, for his sake.” Finn was packing up the bedroll they had given the scav the night before. “He didn’t do anything wrong. It was his right to leave if that’s what he wanted.”

“Goodbye and thanks for rescuing me from the hell-ship woudn’t have hurt,” Poe said.

He had woken up just as the dawn light began to wash the valley in gold. Hux was curled sidelong against him, his head nestled in the warm curve of Poe’s neck. His hair was brushing Poe’s cheek, sweet-smelling and soft, lit the colour of burnished copper in the morning light. At some point in the night, he had looped one leg over both of Poe’s, coiling them together as though he never meant to let go. His blossomy skin was cool and slightly damp to the touch, freshened with dew-water, and Poe found himself tracing the outline of Hux’s sleep-parted lips. He still felt heavy and stiff with sleep, but his cock responded to the memory of last night, twitching in interest. Their kisses had been slow, deep, taking their time, as though they had a lifetime to explore and grow familiar with one another’s bodies. Poe wanted it to be so, more than he thought he had ever wanted anything. It was as though the two of them had slipped into the space between where two spheres brushed up against one another, suspended briefly out of time between a _before_ and an _after_ , and every single one of Poe’s senses was consumed by the texture of Hux’s skin, the scent of his hair, the hot, velvety pressure of his mouth. In the darkness he couldn’t quite see Hux’s expression as he settled in Poe’s lap, and Poe suspected he preferred it that way. Part of him felt disappointed, saddened by this: he wanted to see, to watch Hux’s face in pleasure, to observe how his expression changed with those little, soft noises he made as they kissed. It seemed an act more intimate than that of kissing, even: to watch Hux as he came apart. But Hux’s shadow was falling across him as he straddled Poe, and his face was lost in darkness.

If Poe couldn’t _see_ him, he could _feel_ his way by incremental fingertips. As their mouths continued to drink one another, as Hux continued to cup Poe’s face with a prim kind of delicacy, Poe’s own hands had gone wandering. He moved slowly, giving Hux time with every inch to push him away, pulling lightly at the folds of Hux’s shirt until it was untucked. He didn’t immediately reach to touch the bare skin of Hux’s stomach underneath, sensing this would be too much too soon, but instead let his uninjured hand ghost lower to the juncture of Hux’s thighs. Hux’s legs were widely parted where he was straddling Poe, his knees on either side of Poe’s hips, not quite close enough for their crotches to grind together. Poe let his fingertips trail just lighty across the front of Hux’s trousers, still asking permission with every touch; he felt Hux hesitate briefly, a small stutter in the rhythm of their kisses, before Hux breathed out through his nose in a little huff that was almost like a laugh. Emboldened, Poe flattened his hand, palming gently against Hux’s crotch, gratified to feel the hard warmth of Hux’s erection pressing against him.

Hux had hissed against Poe’s mouth at the touch, hesitating again, before suddenly diving further into the kiss, fiercely, drawing Poe’s bottom lip between his teeth and nipping hard enough to draw blood.

 _Well_. That was _quite_ the response.

Poe grinned into the kiss, more confident still as he began to massage the hard outline of Hux’s cock, alternating between grinding his palm and trailing his fingertips against it. He was rewarded with a moan from Hux, deep in his throat, Hux’s hands sliding away from Poe’s face to sink into his hair again, his fingers tightening there almost painfully.

“Guess you like that, huh?” Poe whispered against Hux’s mouth, still grinning.

“Shut _up_ ,” Hux rasped, but he thrust forward against Poe’s hand, almost whimpering at the graze of unsatisfying friction. His hands fisted in Poe’s hair, tugging his head back, his teeth scraping against Poe’s cheek, against his neck, as though he meant to bite him.

Incredibly pleased with himself, Poe began to work one-handed at the catches on the front of Hux’s trousers. It was kind of awkward, but it wasn’t like he hadn’t had practise. The trousers Hux was wearing were Resistance-issue, like everything else he wore these days apart from that coat: dark grey, with a sort of corselet at the back that drew the band snugly around that itty bitty little waist of his, and hook and eye fastenings at the front that Poe was presently working his fingers around. It was a little difficult to kiss Hux, and undo the catches, and be smooth all at the same time, and on his third failed attempt at popping the hooks loose he muttered “Hang on” against Hux’s mouth, reluctantly breaking the kiss so he could twist his head to see what he was doing.

“I thought you were supposed to be good at this.” For a moment, the shift in position meant that he caught a glimpse of Hux’s face in the moonlight, his expression amused, cruel, merciless, his lips drawn back from his teeth in an almost-smile of feral want, a feverish colour burning high in his cheeks, his eyes very bright. To Poe, in that instant he looked remote, terrifying, more beautiful than he had ever seen him.

Hux released his fistful of Poe’s hair and slipped his hand downwards, clasping over Poe’s hand, his fingers lacing between Poe’s. “I don’t know what you think you’re trying to achieve, _commander_ ,” he said, sneering, his voice a deadly silken purr, “but your efforts are sorely lacking thus far.”

“Oh yeah?” Poe flicked two fingers and the catches on Hux’s trousers popped loose. He was gratified to see Hux’s confident smirk falter slightly as he glanced down in surprise.

“That efficient enough for you, _general_? And who the hell says _thus far_ during dirty talk?”

“ _Be quiet_ ,” Hux hissed, and crushed their mouths together again.

They had been kissing for several minutes when Poe said, his mouth against Hux’s, “Swap places with me.”

Hux actually pulled away at that, his expression almost offended. A strand of hair was falling across his brow and his lips were reddened and slightly swollen from the friction of Poe’s mouth. “I’m _sorry_?” He sounded as affronted as though Poe had asked him to do a strip tease. Now _there_ was an idea…

“Swap with me,” Poe repeated. Hux had trapped his legs beneath him slightly as he leant back, but Poe manoeuvred himself more upright so he could tug his arms out of his jacket. “You can lie on this.”

“Why would I want to _lie_ on anything – ?” Hux began, through his teeth, but he stumbled a little as Poe cupped his face in his hands, stroking his thumbs along the high lines of Hux’s cheekbones, bringing their foreheads together again. Hux was almost cross-eyed trying to focus on Poe’s face this close.

“The moment you want to stop,” Poe said, his voice gentle, “if you want to stop, you say and we stop. Okay? I want to make you feel good.”

He heard the soft click in Hux’s throat as he swallowed. The edges of his eyes were raw-pink, dampened. He looked so lost that Poe felt his heart could almost burst with love for him, the intensity of the feeling almost surprising him as much as the fact of it. He stroked that loose strand away from Hux’s brow, nuzzled their noses together, lifted his head and feathered a kiss on the downy spot between Hux’s brows.

“I will never do anything you don’t want me to do. Okay?”

He felt the soft brush of Hux’s lashes as he blinked, once, twice. “I – yes. Yes.”

Beneath the boughs of the ancient tree, Poe unfurled him. He settled them close, his arm cradling Hux against him, his bandaged hand resting against Hux’s shoulder. Beneath his Resistance regulation trousers, Hux was wearing a pair of snug little black briefs, probably his own First Order issue ones judging by the good nick they were in. They were utterly adorable. Poe covered the outline of Hux’s cock with his uninjured palm, before he curled his fingers inward, dragging his nails just lightly against its hard heat. Hux shivered, fully, his breath hot and rapid against Poe’s neck. Poe could feel a damp spot where pre-come was gathering beneath the tight fabric, and he traced his fingertips along the length of Hux’s shaft, before dipping lower again to press gently against the swell of his balls.

“How does that feel?” he whispered, turning his head so his words murmured warmly into Hux’s hair.

Hux shuddered again, open-mouthed, his eyes closed as his head fell back. “It feels – it feels – _good_ – _oh_ – ”

He twitched beneath Poe’s hand, his hips bucking forward needfully, seeking more. Poe repeated his motion from before, palming along the curve of Hux’s shaft, before running the backs of his nails against it gently. Hux drew in a sharp, hitching breath, almost a cry, his hands flying to his face where colour was flooding his cheeks, his lips, his eyes. He half-clasped a hand over his own mouth as though to stifle the noises he was making, his other hand shielding his eyes as his breast rose and fell erratically. His erection was straining against the black fabric now, achingly hard, damp and hot against Poe’s fingers. He wondered how long Hux would last, just stroking him like this.

Slowly still, asking permission with every gesture, his eyes on Hux’s face, Poe slid his fingers to the waistband of Hux’s briefs, tugging them a little lower over his slim hips. From just under Hux’s navel, disappearing out of sight beneath his briefs, there was the sweetest, softest, palest little treasure trail, a line of downy hair so fine and delicate that it felt like silk beneath the pads of Poe’s fingertips. He followed the trail, careful, his hand slipping beneath the tight briefs and clasping fully, _at last_ , over Hux’s cock.

Hux _shuddered_ , shivered all over as though a current had been run through him, the muscles in his thighs twitching and spasming as Poe wrapped his hand around the base of his cock. With his hand tenting the briefs, he could just discern the neat little thatch of Hux’s pubic hair, a deeper, darker red than the hair on his head. Experimentally, he circled his thumb around the swollen head of Hux’s cock, already slick with pre-come.

Hux’s breath caught, snagged, rasped through his throat, as though in pain. His hands were fully over his face now, his head arched back in Poe’s arm, exposing the white flash of his throat. For a moment, he felt as limp and boneless as a heart-shot bird, swooning against Poe.

Poe straightened, his arm tightening around him protectively. “You okay?”

He heard Hux gulp, raggedly. “I – I – ssshaa – pleah – _please_ – _stop_.”

Poe withdrew his hand immediately, reaching instead to touch the part of Hux’s face he could actually see – the edge of his cheek. “Hey, I’m sorry – Hugs – ”

“ _Don’t call me that_ – not now.” Hux’s voice emerged in a despairing scrape; he almost sounded close to tears. He lifted his hands away from his face and even in the low light Poe could see that he had been biting the flesh of his palm, not quite enough to draw blood but deep enough to form a crescent moon of teeth-marks in the soft tissue at the base of his thumb. There were erratic blotches of colour in Hux’s face, mottling his cheeks and the thin skin beneath his eyes, his nostrils pink and flaring, his mouth a bruise of red. He looked – tormented, rather than the recipient of pleasure.

“You’re shaking,” Poe said.

“It was just – it was so much.”

“It’s okay. You’re okay.”

“I’ve made a fool of myself.”

“No.” Poe’s voice was fierce. “No. It doesn’t matter why you wanted to stop. I’m not like that. Okay?”

Hux blinked in a drawn out sort of way, as though the truth behind Poe’s words was reaching him through a film of cotton wool. For a moment, his expression was blank, almost uncomprehending, before he took Poe completely by surprise by laughing.

“Great _stars_.” Hux pressed the heel of his palm under one eye, delicately, where a dampness had gathered. “I possess a truly unrivalled talent for spoiling things.”

His other hand found Poe’s and settled over it. Poe tipped his own hand reflexively so their palms kissed, lacing their fingers together. He traced his thumb over the ridges of Hux’s knuckles.

“We don’t need to do it again,” he said.

Hux gave his head an impatient shake. “I never said I didn’t _want_ it.”

“I know. But I don’t ever want you to feel – obligated, or whatever. You don’t owe me anything, least of all your own body. Okay? I mean, I wouldn’t _complain_ if I had to fuck you – ” Poe grinned, suddenly self-conscious, as Hux lifted an eyebrow at him – “I think you are _crazy_ hot. But just this – ” He gestured at their clasped hands; Hux’s gaze followed the gesture – “This is enough for me, to be with you.”

Hux showed his teeth a little. “ _You_ must be crazy.”

“Yeah, and you’re not? You just let a Resistance pilot put his hand in your pants.”

“ _Unbearable_ ,” Hux snipped, but he didn’t bother to put any venom behind the word. He shook his head again, as though he were trying to rattle his disordered thoughts back into some semblance of direction. Poe lifted his hand to stroke through Hux’s hair, thoroughly mussing it. He felt a little ache of gratification when Hux leant into the touch slightly.

“Do you want to go to sleep?” Poe said.

Hux glanced in the direction of the camp, subtly nudging Poe’s hand away as he did so. Poe didn’t mind; he was beginning to learn Hux’s tolerance levels for the amount of touching he permitted.

“I need to put myself to rights first.”

“We could sleep here?” Poe gestured at the accommodating alcove they were still nestled in.

Hux’s nose wrinkled. “ _Here_?”

“It’s not _that_ bad. Want me to get you a bedroll?”

Hux sighed. “I’m sure here will be fine.” He looked down at where his and Poe’s fingers were still laced together, resting against Poe’s leg. In a gesture so simple, so heart-piercingly sweet Poe would never forget it, he lifted their joined hands, raising Poe’s hand to his face, grazing the back of Poe’s knuckles with his lips: not quite a kiss.

“Thank you,” Hux said.

Now, Poe watched the subtle, flickering motion of Hux’s eyes behind the film of his closed lids – dreaming. He wondered, briefly, what General Hux could dream of. In sleep, his face looked impossibly young, soft and slack and unguarded, the lines around his eyes and mouth rendered gossamer fine without the scaffolding of expression that usually held them taut. Poe felt an ache of longing beneath his breastbone. Last night, it had taken a good half hour after he realised Hux had fallen asleep for his own erection to abate. Hux had slipped so quickly, so mercifully into sleep beside him that his head had lolled against Poe’s shoulder, and it felt like the most natural thing in the world to adjust the arm that was already halfway around Hux’s own shoulders so that his head came to be tucked safely beneath Poe’s chin. He nosed at Hux’s hair, breathing in the scent of him. In his sleep, Hux made a soft, unformed sound.

He knew then that this was the truth. It didn’t matter if Hux never allowed him to touch him again. Poe just wanted him to feel safe. He would find other ways of worshipping him.

Although at the moment, he had a rather more pressing concern. The arm he had folded around Hux had been trapped in the same position since the night before; Hux had clearly rolled and snuggled closer to Poe in his sleep, but Poe hadn’t been able to move an inch. His entire left arm was presently rigid and prickling with pins and needles.

“Ow, ow, babe,” he said, trying to shift under Hux’s weight. “Shit, sorry, gonna have to move – _owww_ – ”

Hux was awake in an instant, jerking upright, his hair hopelessly tousled, the imprint of the seam of Poe’s shirt pressed into his cheek. He blinked at Poe a little wildly, before lifting his hand to wipe at his mouth. Poe didn’t quite have the heart to tell him that Hux had _definitely_ been drooling on him.

“What’s the matter?” Hux said sharply, his voice hoarse with sleep.

Poe was flexing and shaking his liberated arm. “Nothing,” he said, laughing. “Just had my arm at a weird angle.”

Hux gave him a wary look, before glancing at the alcove where they had slept. Poe could see his cheeks warming. Hux lifted a hand to run fussily through his hair, trying to tuck bits of its behind his ears. It was growing slightly over-long in a way that Poe found enormously appealing, but which he could imagine was driving Hux to distraction. He mirrored the action, scuffing at his own hair.

“Hey, maybe there’ll be a barber in town,” he said.

They neatened themselves as best as possible, both moving a little creakily. Poe was putting his jacket back on when Hux said, “No one can know about this.”

Poe knew immediately what he was talking about, but he grasped at playfulness to try and hide the surge of dismay he felt, striking a comical little pose. “What, that I’m incredibly handsome even first thing in the morning?”

He had expected Hux to scoff or roll his eyes at that. Instead, his expression was directed inward, looking into his own thoughts. Poe could see them, briefly, roiling and tumultuous beneath the surface of his gaze.

“Your friends,” Hux said at last. He clasped and unclasped his hands together in front of him, fidegting a little at his palms, before he moved them to clench together behind his back. “They will not be welcoming of this.”

“Hey.” Poe stepped a little closer, reaching out to touch Hux’s elbow. “I’m not suggesting we make out in front of them. But the guys are chill.”

Hux had looked down at where Poe was touching him. Now he glanced back up. “Rey and Tico, maybe. But the others. Finn. The Wookiee.” He shook his head. “It is not I who I am concerned for, but you. Your own standing, with them, with the rest of the Resistance. I know I am perfectly capable of discretion, but I frankly have my doubts about you.” He sounded, briefly, fondly amused as he said it, rather than admonitory. “And besides, rumour will out every time.”

Very gently, Poe reached behind Hux’s back and disentangled his hands, pulling them around to the front so he could hold them in both of his. Again, Hux followed the motion with his gaze, cautious.

“They’re not gonna kill me for literally sleeping with you, Hugs.”

Something almost like a smile ghosted at the edges of Hux’s mouth, but it was too sad to truly be such. “Maybe not. But there may still be a trial, and that will change things.”

Poe stood on tiptoe so he could kiss Hux’s forehead, then the tip of his nose, then finally his mouth. The kiss deepened, intensified, became an embrace. Hux was blushing and blinking rapidly when they finally pulled apart.

“Is there ever gonna be a time when this doesn’t happen whenever I kiss you?” Poe said, grinning, cupping Hux’s hot cheeks.

The edges of Hux’s mouth tightened. He still looked slightly dazed. “ _What_?”

“This.” He stroked Hux’s cheek. “You go redder than your hair.”

Hux gave a little huff of annoyance, the blush creeping into his ears now. “If I could _help_ it – ”

Poe quieted him with another kiss, using the tip of his tongue to gently part Hux’s lips this time. “I don’t want it to stop,” he said, their mouths together.

“Nor do I,” Hux said, but he didn’t mean the blushing. Poe pulled him closer, his lips brushing the soft fuzz of Hux’s sideburn as he kissed his ear.

“It’s gonna be okay,” he whispered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hux knows very well that Poe is a general too now. He's just being a dick about it.
> 
> Any and all comments are loved and appreciated, so I'd love to know what people think. Come and say hi to me on tumblr @mslollywillowes I am always ready to yell about our gingerpilot boys.


	19. Out of the Woods

Hux said, “Absolutely not.”

“I’m not suggesting we shave it off,” Dameron said. “It’s just – the colour is really conspicuous.”

“I am not,” Hux said, “wearing _that_.”

 _That_ was a tattered dark green poncho with a baggy hood. Dameron said he had worn it on Kijimi to ‘blend in’. Hux thought he was more likely to draw the eye of every soul around him because of how completely hideous the thing was.

“Paige told me once that the snipers she worked with who had brightly-coloured hair used to put engine oil in it. You know, to make it darker,” Tico said. She paused, seeming to contemplate Hux. “I mean, I don’t think anyone she knew had hair quite as noticeable as yours.”

“Are we really doing this?” Finn said incredulously. “Standing around debating his fashion choices?”

“To use the word in its broadest possible definition,” Hux said, still eyeing the poncho in distaste.

Finn actually grinned slightly at that. “Hey, it’s your colour.”

“Or,” said Rey – her smile was mischievous, “you could always stay behind with Chewie. I’m sure you guys have a lot to talk about.”

“Very droll, both of you,” Hux said.

“I like your hair,” Dameron said a little later, as though he were answering a question Hux had never asked. He was standing on the edge of the _Falcon’s_ cockpit exterior as he tried to secure a tarpaulin over a very noticeable crack in the viewport. He kept leaning back slightly and letting the heels of his boots hang over the edge; it was making Hux nervous. “I love your hair,” he added, correcting himself. From his elevated position, he grinned down at Hux. “But you do kinda stand out, Hugs.”

Hux felt himself scowling, but it was more from worry than annoyance – although Dameron’s carefree attitude to his own safety was certainly annoying. The sun kept getting in his eyes as he tried to watch what Dameron was doing (or more precisely, watch whether he was about to fall off the edge of the ship or not), and he kept having to put his hand up to shade his view as he looked up at Dameron, and squint a little while doing so, and it was making him feel altogether at a disadvantage.

“Oh, and of course the rest of you are so subtle and unassuming,” he said acidly, then – “Be _careful_!” – as Dameron almost stepped backwards off the edge of the cockpit. The man had the audacity to grin at him again.

“It’s so cute when you worry about me.”

“I worry about you damaging the ship even more when you knock your dense skull against it,” Hux snapped.

“Smooth talker.” In one easy, athletic motion, Dameron jumped down from the cockpit. Hux swallowed, lifted his chin.

“Don’t,” he said, when Dameron made as if to move towards him. “People are looking.”

Dameron kept moving, and past him. “No funny business, just wanted to give you this.” His hand brushed against Hux’s, a little longer than was necessary, their fingers briefly slipping and entwining together, and Hux felt the outline of a slim smooth object pressed into his palm.

“I was – going to hang onto it.” Dameron’s voice was low, his gaze directed down towards where Hux had closed his fingers around the code cylinder. His body was still angled slightly past Hux, his fingers still brushing against the back of Hux’s hand. He glanced up, that night-black sweep of his lashes that made the floor drop out of Hux’s stomach. “It’s not because I didn’t trust you,” he added, the words coming out in a funny little rush. He was watching Hux’s face now as though trying to gauge his reaction. “It’s just – I thought – ”

“You thought the information on it should belong to the Resistance,” Hux said. He was holding the cylinder lightly, not possessively. He could still just feel the brush of Dameron’s fingertips through his glove.

“For what it’s worth – ” Still in that low, intense voice; Dameron’s eyes were so impossibly, richly velvet in their darkness that Hux nearly wobbled where he stood. “I do trust you. I want you to know that.”

“More fool you.” He tried to affect hauteur but it just made both of them smile. Something small and cracked and long-stifled flinched in his chest. He didn't think he would ever get over making Dameron smile like that.

“Just out of interest,” Dameron said. He had his free hand in his pocket now, his weight inclining on one leg, which meant he was trying to be casual. “How did you manage to hang onto that in the first place?”

“There are many things that the Resistance has not managed to take from me yet,” Hux replied. He weighed the cylinder in his palm a moment longer, before he slipped it back into Dameron’s hand, closing the other man’s fingers over it. “The Order commands a fleet of ghost vessels now. Nothing on this device can be of use to it anymore. Build a greenhouse with it. Or a _real_ ship,” he added, the edge of his mouth lifting.

“Hugs,” Dameron said, very gently. “You don’t need to do this.”

Hux gave a thin little laugh. “Please, Dameron,” he said. He took his hand away, deliberately. “Don’t mistake this as charity on my part. Although,” he couldn’t resist adding, the other side of his mouth drawing up now to meet the first in a wicked little concordance, “the Resistance could probably do with an alms-giving, considering the state it’s in.”

“Good thing you’re an engineer then, huh?” Dameron said. His mouth was soft but the smile was all in his eyes. He tossed the code cylinder end over end, catching it again, reclosed the space between himself and Hux, and pressed the cylinder back into his hand, maintaining eye contact all the while. “I bet you can probably fix most anything.”

And it was that, perhaps more than anything else Dameron had ever said to him, that made Hux feel as though he had missed a step in the dark.

*

They left the Wookiee and BB-8 to stay with the _Falcon_. Just before they were about to leave, the droid came trundling over to Hux as he knelt to tighten the laces on his boot. They were rolling along with a desultory little cant to their chassis, their path wavering slightly in peculiar imitation of a limp. Hux suspected they were rather putting it on.

BB-8 bumped against Hux’s leg, gave a maudlin, downwardly-scaled whistle, rolled their weight over on one side to look expectantly into his face. Hux made a point of taking his time in tying off the knot, before he looked at the droid.

“Of course I’m not going to forget,” he said. He put his hand on their dome, running the pads of his fingertips over the blunt little nub of BB-8’s missing antenna. The droid chirped and gave a pleased little jiggle, suddenly agile again. Hux smiled.

“You’re a terrible liar,” he said dryly. He shifted so he could dip a hand in his pocket, drawing out the code cylinder. An idea had been half-forming in his head that he wasn’t entirely sure he was ready to commit to yet, but this seemed as good an opportunity as ever to hedge his bets, at least until he had had enough time to crystallise the thought in his mind. Uncertainty was not something to which Hux was especially accustomed, but these days, feeling as though he knew less about the galaxy with every passing day, he found he liked to feel his way around an idea first, mapping its potential and its discrepancies before putting shape and permanence to it by speaking it aloud.

“Look,” he said. “I want you to take care of this. It is very important, you understand? It has data on it that might be of use to your people.”

He was slightly offended when BB-8 popped out their scanner and ran the blue light of the holoscan along the length of the cylinder. “It is _not_ a bomb,” Hux said, with an attitude of enormously wounded dignity.

BB-8 whistled happily, retracted their scanner, joggled a little – apparently satisfied that Hux wasn’t planning anything unreasonably nefarious. A small panel on their dome slid open, revealing a little storage receptacle.

“Don’t tell anyone about this for now,” Hux said as he placed the code cylinder inside, very aware that asking BB-8 not to do this was about as likely as asking Dameron to fly his X-Wing in a straight line. “Especially not Poe – ”

Dameron’s given name slipped out quite before Hux could stop himself. BB-8 gave a delighted little chirrup that sounded suspiciously like ‘I _knew_ it!’. Hux tried to scowl, all the while feeling a smile of embarrassed pleasure tugging at the edges of his mouth.

“And _definitely_ don’t tell him about that,” he said, trying for severity. He suspected that it was the first thing BB-8 was going to do.

*

They found a path that ran deep through the pinewood. In this part of the trees, the river lay a still and placid green, its current only occasionally visible from little eddies and flurries around rock formations, or where it tumbled over a small waterfall to meet with two joining sources, the streams mingling with a pleasant, rustling sound. Rey seemed to be deliberately keeping them near the water, and where it was shallow enough she would periodically make them cross to the other bank and walk on that side for a while, before splashing back across again after twenty minutes or so. Hux suspected he knew why she was doing this, and the thought made him uneasy: to throw their scent off from any pursuit.

A cold, lazy wind was sighing through the trees, but Hux soon found himself sweating and panting after so much scrambling up and down the riverbank, and at one point Tico had to unceremoniously put her hands on his flank and give him a push as he struggled to climb up a particularly marshy section. Dameron’s poncho was probably meant to be breathable, but with the stupid hood up Hux could feel his hair clinging to his damp forehead and perspiration trickling down the back of his neck. Stars, this entire ordeal was mortifying. He was working himself up into a thoroughly sour temper when Rey suddenly paused ahead of them, balancing lightly mid-step on the balls of her feet, her entire posture alert, _listening_.

“Hear that?” she said, her voice low.

Something tiny, winged and skittering batted against Hux’s cheek and he tried to stop himself shivering as he reached irritably to brush it away, trying to hear what Rey was hearing. She looked as though she were listening with the tautness of her entire body, straining her every sinew to map what lay ahead through hearing alone. Dameron, Tico and Finn had gathered in a little formation either side of her, Finn’s head lowered as he listened too, Tico scanning the trees around them, Dameron looking directly ahead, a frown of concentration drawing his brows together.

The wind seemed to shift in its direction briefly, and Hux heard it for the first time: a low, distant murmur of voices, too indistinct to tell what language they were speaking or what direction the sound was coming from. The insect that was _still_ caught inside his wretched hood chittered against his neck and Hux couldn’t help giving a tiny squeak of disgust, pushing the hood back to try and free whatever was batting its horrible little wings against him.

“ _Put that back_ ,” Finn hissed at him. “We’re trying to stop you being a kriffing target.”

Hux glared at him, but tugged the hood back over his hair. If he caught some sort of flesh eating disease from being bitten by that repellent winged thing, he would have some very strong words to share with all of them.

Rey moved off, stepping silently over a bank of treefall. Now that Hux had caught the sound of the voices he found he could hang onto them more easily; it was still difficult to pinpoint their precise direction with the hood covering his ears, but he could tell Rey was leading them in a broad circumference towards the south-east, keeping the voices on their left.

There was a clearing up ahead, the smell of woodsmoke. Rey made a silent gesture for them to stop, dropping fluently into a crouch behind the moss-furred trunk of a fallen tree. The others joined her, the sharp, quick exhalations of their breath smoking in the chilly air. Somewhere in the direction of the clearing, a dog was barking.

“Friendlies?” Dameron’s voice was heavy with cynicism.

“We need to try and get around them,” Rey said.

“Maybe they’re from the town,” Finn said. “Could be a hunting party or something.”

“Whoever they are, I am inclined to agree with Rey,” Hux said. “We are already risking ourselves enough making contact with the town without any prior knowledge of their allegiance.”

Finn said, “It’s okay, we’ll just ransom you off if there’s any trouble.”

“I hardly think the First Order is in a position to _pay_ for me,” Hux snipped lightly. The barest hint of a smile passed between the two of them, before Finn turned his head to peer over the top of the tree trunk.

“We can probably cut around them if we cross the river again. It’ll keep us out of their line of sight at least.”

They progressed onwards in a ragged little single file, Rey leading, Dameron bringing up the rear behind Hux. The ground on the other side of the river was heavy and dry with dead leaf-fall, noisy underfoot, and Hux grimaced at the uncomfortably loud crunch of Dameron’s boots, whipping his head around to give him an admonishing look. Dameron mouthed “ _Sorry_ ” at him and grinned, a little guiltily.

They had reached the edge of the pinewood, where the trees thinned out into the sparser undulations of a snakegrass field, when they ran across the first part of the energy barrier.

They almost didn’t see it until they were right on top of it. “Shit, _stop_!” Tico, who was directly behind Rey, grabbed the back of Rey’s jacket with both hands, pulling her to a halt. “ _Listen_.”

As a group, they instinctively hunkered down at the edge of the long, silvered grass, eyes on Tico as she lifted her hand and pointed, ahead and slightly to the left. Just past where the pinewood opened up into the field, a thin, gun-metal grey post was standing in the grass. A second post was positioned around ten or so metres to the left of it, and a third, and a fourth, and so on – following the broad sweep of the treeline into the distance. What Tico had heard, Hux realised now, was the low, persistent humming of an energy field, so low in frequency that it was more like an itch against the ear rather than an audible sound.

“What the hell?” Dameron was kneeling right next to him, and he put his hand on Hux’s shoulder as he leant forward. It was an unconscious, trusting sort of gesture that Hux realised he liked, before promptly feeling extremely annoyed with himself for being so easily distracted. There were far more important things to worry about right now than where Dameron’s hands were going.

“Are those – electrical pylons or something?” Finn said. Tico began to shake her head, set her mouth grimly, turned it into a half-nod.

“It’s a security cordon,” she said. “The towers are all connected.”

“Should be okay though,” Dameron said. “There isn’t a fence. Is it even turned on?” But Tico was already searching for something on the ground near her feet, her hand closing around a small rock. Looking back at the space between the nearest two pylons, she drew her arm back, aimed and pitched.

A sharp _crack_ , and the rock was obliterated into a shower of fragments, leaving only the smell of ozone in its wake. Two rows of sugar-thin wires were briefly visible running between the pylons, fizzing in the aftermath of the shock.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Dameron said.

“It goes all the way around the entrance to the woods on this side.” Rey was looking at the spot where the rock had been vaporised as though she were trying to see the deadly, invisible thrumming of the current.

“Do you think it’s keeping something in or out?” Finn said.

“Whatever it’s doing, it’s certainly going to do an extremely effective job of stopping _us_ ,” Hux said.

“Okay.” Dameron breathed out heavily. “This is – exactly bad.”

Rey said, quietly, “We’ve already made enough noise. We need to move.”

They picked their way along the edge of the cordon, Rey using the Force to search periodically for weak spots. They tried to keep just within the treeline, the cordon and the snakegrass field on their right. Hux caught his boot on a tangle of blackberry thorn and kicked gently to free himself. He could hear Dameron breathing behind him. Up ahead, there was a quick, forresty rustle that made him still, glancing across to where Rey was looking at the cordon. Beyond her, just discernible against the sun in the far distance, Hux could make out the square red outline of what looked like some kind of building. How close to the town were they? He looked up ahead, expecting to see Finn and Tico directly in front of him – and that was when he saw it.

The security perimeter made a sharp dogleg to navigate around where the treeline jutted into the field, before straightening out again as it began to curve back north-west. Just beyond this junction, one of the pylons had been torn up like a tent-peg and flung backwards, the space between this pylon and the next sparking as the power attempted to leap between the two. Such was the apparent force with which this had been done that as Hux advanced closer he saw two of the wires, which looked as dextrous and tough as steel-enforced spiderweb, had been twanged clean asunder, curling up into twisted loops. The pylon on the other side had been tugged almost free of the earth, despite the fact that it, like the other, looked to have been sunk over four feet into the ground with a clawed base to anchor it in position. Hux stepped closer, slowly, feeling unease gathering along his spine.

From what he could see, there were no discernible tracks on the ground, no signs of disturbance in the earth or amongst the fallen leaves. He leant over with his hands on his knees to inspect the wires, using a twig to lift the severed end of one closer to his face. Its edges were not ragged as he had expected, not the result of a violent force wrenching the wire in two; rather, they were blunted, almost smooth, as though from a sudden, intense heat. He stared at it in the silence for several long seconds: at the even, soldered cleave of it.

It was the silence that he was suddenly aware of like the atavistic prickle on the skin that says eyes are on you. He carefully lowered the wire and straightened, very slowly, schooling himself not to turn quickly to look for the others. Straight ahead of him, deeper within the pinewood, something was standing motionless – watching him.

He knew in that moment, with perfect clarity, that if he moved he would die. It was a steady sort of realisation, settling on him not with a sense of panic or even necessarily of fear, but with a focused calm that made him straighten his back, very slowly, his gaze arrowed like a deer that lifts its head in a clearing and sees that it is hunted. The thing that he was looking at seemed poised against the colour of the woods like an outline of night that has been excised from the firmament and stitched into the air, indefinably tangible and yet intangible, as though a hand could reach through its shape and touch the cold heart-chambers of the galaxy itself. There was something almost birdlike in its figure, in the draconic contour of its head, but its edges seemed restive, as though in a constant state of unpredictable fluctuation. Hux couldn’t seem to get a fix on it, for it shifted and glimmered like mercury, and he was acutely aware of a sense of extraordinary power, and a patient, piercing intelligence. It watched him, as he watched it, learning him.

“ _Poe_ – ” he whispered, wanting to turn his head to look for him because Dameron was suddenly all he could think of – the taste of his mouth and the touch of his skin flooding Hux’s senses as he realised that Dameron was walking unknowing into the path of this creature whose very essence reeked of death and there was _nothing Hux could do to stop it happening_. Time seemed to dilate outward into immeasurable stillness, the undetectable motion of a molecule-burst on the surface of a pond, before something, perhaps a flicker of his own eye, a subtle alteration in the tiny, ticking mechanisms of his body, made the creature’s head turn like a striking snake – and the whole world crashed into movement.

Hux’s ears were ringing as he pushed himself into a half-sitting position from where someone had shoved him onto the ground. He put his hands to his face, touching something wet and sticky – his vision was doubling, black pulsing at the edges. He could hear Finn shouting. A red flash lit the trees around him, making him flinch, and it took him seconds to realise it was blaster fire. His balance gave out as he tried to rise, looking wildly around to see Rey and Dameron advancing towards him, both their blasters aimed over Hux’s head. Hux tried to get his legs under him again, but Rey made a quick, flattening gesture with her hand and Hux felt the irresistible power of the Force pushing down on him, preventing him from moving from the ground. He tried to turn to look for the creature, but he could only see movement in jagged fragments as Dameron fired two more shots, his beautiful face ferocious with intent. Hux was aware of something moving with frightening speed towards them, of an unearthly sound that reached to the depths of his eardrums as Dameron fired again and again – before an impulsive, brutal force collided in impact, and Dameron went down on one knee, recovering himself with the grace of a cat even as the blaster skittered from his hand into the grass. All at once, the pressure bearing down on Hux was lifted.

Hideous silence – the acrid smell of blaster residue – then a stranger’s voice, raised in confrontation somewhere above his head as Hux’s vision bleached and blurred, and his consciousness tilted over the edge and into the dark.


	20. Force Blind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who is still sticking with this fic. Everyone's comments and kudos mean the world, and I genuinely value every single one of them. Depression is absolutely kicking my bum at the moment and this chapter was a bit of a nightmare to write; it's definitely one of those 'not happy with it but it serves a purpose' chapters and is ultimately pretty crucial to the rest of the story. I initially meant for this chapter to be much longer, but I couldn't find a natural end point so decided to cut it off here. There is also so much flagrant 'that's not how the Force works'-ness going on in this chapter I'm tempted to add it to the tags.

Rey felt the Force _split_ around her.

For a moment it was as though she could see somehow outside of herself, could witness in slow motion the bright flash of blaster fire as she pulled the trigger again and again, aiming at the thing in the trees. It was as though the scene around her had frozen in a prism of light, the figures of her companions silhouetted like shadows in a masquerade, fire-limned against the patina of the Force that etched its shapes on her mind like a knife blade. She was aware of Poe beside her, his own face illuminated in grim flashes, of Finn and Rose somewhere behind her, Finn’s voice, and Rey put out her arm, meaning to hold them back; for a moment it was like the ground was surging beneath her, although she couldn’t tell how much of it was the Force itself recoiling as though in revulsion.

The _thing_ in the trees was wrong – Rey felt as though she could see, overlaid like an afterimage across her retina, the rivulets of rot creeping out from it like grotesquely verdant vines, hideous with life. It didn’t so much unfurl as slither, seeking purposefully, and it was blacker than the hate-darkened heart of Sidious himself. Around the creature’s edges a strange heat was pulsing, as though something worse than the rot was trying to escape. Ahead of her, she could see Hux, his edges bright-lit in the Force. There was blood on his face, blood darkening the red of his hair, and for a moment she felt his fear and confusion, directed not towards himself but outward, seeking Poe with such frantic desperation that the sharp, cold terror of his panic almost consumed her too. She envisaged a mental hand pushing it away from herself, trying to separate her emotions from his, trying to pull her mind into a singular point of focus where the Force spilled and rushed around the outline of the creature like rapids around a poisoned island. The creature was drinking the light around it like the heat-death epicentre of a black hole, and more, Rey realised, it was drinking the _Force_ , pulling it inwards towards itself, the distorted reflection around it twisting and juddering in the way starlight is bent by dark matter.

She was aware of Hux trying to get up, could feel the pain of his injury and the confusion pulsing at the edges of his consciousness, cut through with his frantic fear for Poe, and she _shoved_ him downwards with the Force, more roughly than she meant, feeling his surprise like an echo. She felt the seam where the Force was bound to the tangible world shiver and tear, as though its anchors were unravelling one from the other, and beside her Poe stumbled, recovering himself almost at once – just as the Force ruptured like a dam giving way beneath a sudden tidal surge.

Rey swung around blindly, seizing handfuls of Poe’s jacket as she did so and feeling her hold on Hux through the Force come loose. She threw herself and Poe backwards, the heartbeat of time seeming to dilate outwards so she was able to think, quite pragmatically, _this is going to hurt_ –

There was a thick, sucking sound, a _whump_ as though the Force had swallowed an impact, a sudden, high-pitched rushing that quickly built itself to a point – then the Force exploded outwards, the cold burst of air from the blast blowing Rey’s hair across her face, fragments of leaves and tree bark and dirt raining around them with a sizzling sound against the dry grass. Her breath whistled hotly where her mouth was pressed close to the ground, soil gritting against her cheek. She watched an ant trundling idly along the stem of a top-blown dandelion clock.

For a moment she thought that she felt Poe moving beneath her, shifting to push her away, but then Rey realised that it was the ground, the earth beneath them both heaving as though the deeply rooted limbs of a poisoned tree were writhing in sudden, frantic pain. She and Poe were moving as one, scrambling and handing each other to their feet, and then, somehow having known the inevitability of it all along, Rey _felt_ it – as though the implosion in the Force had allowed the last illusory layers to fall away, and as the creature shook itself like it were throwing off the final shackles that had kept it caged, she knew some ancient, terrible knowledge in her blood recognised it, and called out to it as it called out to her.

She reached within herself again, deep into the still hollow at her core, just as Leia had taught her. She felt the thing pushing back at her, resisting, its searching, persistent hands more focused this time, cleverer still, slipping into her secret places all while she tried to hold it back. She imagined a ladder wrought of bright silver, felt its cool grip beneath her palms and felt herself climbing, up, up out of the fog, but it clung to her in tendrils, licking and coiling, tugging her back down with it. She could feel its satisfaction, a silent, waiting pleasure at its knowledge it had won. It could drink the earth of this planet and everything ever born in it, and use the dark water beneath to outstretch the limbs of its great being until it lived within the place whole and could uncoil the terrible reach of its hand to touch the next living world, and the next, until the galaxy was consumed by it. The course of the river would become its veins, the roots of the trees sunk deep in the earth the vast draw of its lungs – and right at the gleaming centre, the heart-blood of the last living Jedi beat with a power that it would take for its own. Rey felt in that moment as though it had drawn them all here, simply for this purpose.

She pulled back away from it with such force she felt the sharp pain of the separation. Feeling it too, the creature recoiled, and seeing her chance she plunged forward, the earth around her bleeding green with fetid life. Up ahead, the scar that cleaved the Force in two seemed to writhe back at its edges like snarling black lips. Beyond, a light was spinning faster than the heat death of a distant star.

It was doorway, and Rey flung herself through it.

*

A current gripped her straight away. She was submerged to the knee in freezing black water, but while the force of it cascading past her was enough to make her stumble, its sound was greater still; a rushing, howling, echoing torrent of noise that hurtled towards her as though across a vast expanse of darkness: a gale crossing a valley as the sky hung empty above it.

It was waiting for her up ahead, somewhere beyond the first turn in the river. She could feel its patient hunger, its watchful waiting calm. It had been here a long time, in the spaces between the worlds, and it could wait longer if it needed to. It was just a reflection of the greater whole, a facet of the vast thought that dwelt somewhere in the depths of the galaxy like an echo, and her presence here was merely flotsam on an ancient wind that coursed through centuries.

At the turn in the river, Rey stopped. Directly ahead of her, something glimmered in the distance, twisting against the glow that seemed to rise like fog from the water itself. It was colder here: the air so frigid she felt the ache of it deep in her bones, and every step forward was an effort. She was aware that she should have been breathing hard, that chilly perspiration should have been standing on her flesh, but instead the air seemed to pass through her as though she were tissue paper, translucent, her veins glowing beneath her skin like the sap-threads of a dead leaf. The gleaming, twisting light ahead refocused itself briefly, and Rey saw what it was: another doorway, but unlike one she had ever seen before. There was something hideous in the fact it was ajar, as though inviting a slippage of some kind between two unnatural consciousnesses. Between where she stood now, and where the blank absence of light, the swallowing of it, lay beyond the crack in the door, Rey knew two worlds were touching in a way that was never meant to be.

It was in there. She felt it with a certainty that would have made her gasp had she possessed lungs in this place, and for the first time she was afraid, truly, paralysingly, atavistically afraid in the way a fox scents its death on the wind and cannot run for the knowledge of it. Within that utterly banal, horribly ordinary space of the open door, the thing put out its hand that had been waiting.

She felt the futile buckle of her sapped power, a lurch inside her as the Force she had already manipulated fizzed like a dying solar flare, and she knew the most she could do would be to slow it down in its consuming of her, and hope that the others were fleeing from the place, away from here, back to Jint, to Leia, to –

A hard pair of hands gripped her shoulders, and she was jerked sharply backwards with such force she was sure her feet were lifted from the ground. She found herself unaccountably tussled around, and she realised she was clutching handfuls of an ugly green poncho, face to face with Armitage Hux.

“ _What is this_?” he demanded, his voice rasping, as furiously bewildered as a sleepwalker who has stumbled upon someone else sharing their dream. “ _Where are we_?” She saw his gaze shift past her, his expression flinch in alarm, and she turned them both in one fluid movement before he could react, trying to put him behind her. The air around them seemed to _slip_ , and she felt the impact through both their bodies, clutching at Hux as he stumbled to keep them both from toppling over. An overwhelming darkness was spilling from the door’s opening, and at its centre shapes were quickening, a multitude of them, a swarm that built at its edges and teemed outward like feasting insects startled from a dead wound. She could see the open line of the door growing wider.

Again, Rey felt the impact of it clash against something. She was still holding onto Hux, and without thinking, acting purely on instinct, she found herself pushing with her own power, imagining it flowing through her and into him. At once, she felt the strange jagged outline of his presence in the Force, both familiar and unfamiliar to her, cold and clear like a bell rung in winter, and the purposeful thrum of her own power reaching to meet him. She felt Hux’s jerk of surprise, felt him instinctively try to pull back away from her, but Rey resisted, holding on to the tenuous link between them. It was like trying to fit two jagged edges together, each snagging and snarling against the other, but when she grasped blindly outward she caught herself on one of his knots and held fast to it.

“ _What are you doing_?” He snarled the words but his face was stricken with fear, clutching her now as she clutched him. Rey gripped the link between them, imagining it shining silver and true in the hurtling darkness around them.

“ _You need to trust me_ – !”

The pure force of the joining poured through her and into him. She had a sense of her nerve endings being blazed clean, utterly without pain, of her skin flayed free of her flesh with only the rush of oxygen against her exposed bloodlines. She was turned inside out and lifted away from herself all at once, floating loose from her body that skimmed the tidal pull of the universe like an atom discharging its singularity into infinite multitude. She was only dimly aware of herself as a physical entity, even less so of Hux, for the rest of her seemed to leap from her consciousness as the rushing turmoil around her ceased.

A coruscating brightness filled the dark behind her closed lids and she opened her eyes against the blaze, feeling the freezing, soundless wind whip against her cheeks. She was tall, taller than the earth, taller than a world set on its end, moving at enormous speed with the leisurely step of a glacier, and her mind was filled with a calm, unending thought that stretched from pinprick to termlessness. Up ahead, far in the distance yet close enough for her to touch, she saw it: the mountain, its foothills lost in cloudgather, a beam of light arrowing from its cracked peak. She knew it like the shape of home on a map and knew that she must reach it. But even as this certainty formed in her, the mountain was receding, growing smaller, dimmer, and she was too, feeling herself dissolving like a speck of liquid light, dispersing her back into the great, teeming flood, and all around her was sea-drift as the water glow began to build.


	21. Ashes and Leaf

The hunter’s name, she said, was Hera, though Poe suspected this may be one of a dozen other aliases. She had a flinty way of pinning you with her stare that reminded him of Leia; she was around the same age as the general, perhaps a little older, and could make him feel just as guilty with a look. She and a young togruta girl who seemed to be her lieutenant of sorts had come upon them whilst they were still reeling from – whatever the fuck had happened. They had a dog with them that seemed, from what Poe could tell, more cybernetics than animal; its haunches had been replaced by a whirring chassis of rust-gnarled wires that made a metallic swishing sound as the dog moved and the left side of its head flickered and blinked like a circuit board, the whorl of a missing ear and a dent in the dog’s upper jaw suggesting that part of it had once been violently torn away and replaced by a jury-rigged piece of durasteel. The dog seemed none the worse for wear for it, trotting placidly at its mistress’s side and nosing with polite curiosity at the hand Rey offered to it. Poe noticed Hux eyeing the dog a little apprehensively; perhaps he was contemplating how the dog’s mobility aids had been engineered, though Poe wondered if he had ever even seen a dog before.

Hux had tried to shrug away Poe’s efforts to help him to the hunters’ camp – tried to: he was unsteady on his feet and nearly toppled over frontways when he attempted to lean down to brush dirt off his trousers. Poe was worried about the glassy, slightly unfocused look in Hux’s eyes, the waxy pallor to his skin. The gash to his head, just above his hairline, didn’t look deep and had been easily sealed with a spray bandage, but this was the second time he’d been knocked unconscious in less than twenty-four hours and concussion was a sonufabitch.

The togruta girl was watching Poe watch Hux. “We have treatment you can use,” she said. When Poe glanced at her quizzically, she indicated Hux with a nod. “For your _d’bhem_. His head.”

“That’s generous of you.” He tried to parse the unfamiliar word from the imperfect Togruti he had picked up during his smuggling days. The root of the word, he knew, was _heart_. He grinned at the girl, enormously pleased, slightly bashful in a way that felt strange but not uncomfortable to him. “That obvious, huh?”

She was skimming off the top layer of ash from the firepit with a flat, smooth stone, her expression matter-of-fact. “The way he looks at you? Yes.”

Clearly Poe was the only one amused by this. “Think I’m in with a shot?”

He watched as she added the ash to a small tin dish that already contained some of the spade-shaped, dark green leaves he had seen growing near the hunters’ camp, before using the hilt of her knife to begin working the two consistencies together. “It’ll help if he still has all his brains in his head,” she said in a dry tone. She scraped up the mixture with the edge of her knife, flattened it like an artist working paint on a palette, before she set to mixing again. “You need to put this in boiling water and make him drink it.”

“That’s good,” he said. He watched her work in silence for a few moments, before his gaze slid past her to find Hux again. He was leaning slightly forward where he sat near the fire, elbows on his knees, one hand shading his eyes. It was a posture of irritation but Poe suspected this was not the reason for it. He looked back at the togruta girl. “How much do you guys know about that creature thing?”

She gave him a cool, measuring sort of look that reminded him very much of Hux. Or was it Leia? Shit, he was losing track of who’s disapproving glare belonged to who, except for the fact that they were all usually directed at him. The girl scraped and flattened the mixture again; by now it was seafoam grey and very smooth. She ran the excess off the edge of her knife against the bowl, before offering it to Poe.

“Give it to your _d’bhem_. It will help the pain.”

*

Dameron was doing that HoloNet movie star thing again, hands on his hips as though the wind presently tousling his hair had blown in especially for him. He was talking to the togruta girl, making her smile a little, his gestures easy, unthreatening. He was standing slightly back from her, giving her space while she bent her head over something she was holding in a little metal dish. Hux watched them for a moment, uncertain what emotion he was feeling. It was uncomfortable, made him feel scratchy and disquieted in himself, but it was also one of familiarity, as though he recognised something in the girl’s wary, watchful stance, and in the nimble way Dameron was unwinding her. The older woman kept glancing over at him with an uneasy little frown, and Hux tried to keep himself turned away from her while looking as unsuspicious as possible. Stars damn it all, he felt like a common criminal. If Dameron would just stop _flirting_ and let them all get on with this –

He felt Rey’s presence before he saw her, the shiver like an itch of electricity along his spine. He shook his head irritably to try and bat the sensation away, regretted it immediately as a sharp pain lanced through him directly behind his left eye. The feeling had not been unpleasant, and was all the more terrible for it; it had felt like – nostalgia, like recognising the silhouette of an open door you once walked out of a hundred years ago and have at last returned to, reeling, half-starved, wearing a different face. He felt if he put out his hand she would move hers in the same motion, that if he blinked she would too.

He felt as though that thing in the snakegrass field had taken something from him, and that Rey had bargained away a piece of both of them in the process of trying to get it back.

Wordlessly, she settled herself on the ground a few feet away from him, knitting her long legs together. She holding a straight, hefty-looking tree branch that was probably nearly as tall as she was standing up, and she laid it against her knees now, looking down at it. For a moment, neither of them spoke.

Then, “I’m sorry,” her voice overlapping his at the same time as he said, “Listen – ” They stopped, looked at each other, and the smile was slow to Rey’s face, slower to Hux’s, but it somehow felt like a truce.

“I’ve been trying to work it out,” Rey said at last, after another small silence. He glanced across at her but she wasn’t looking at him, her gaze instead directed downwards to where her hands rested pensively on the stick in her lap.

When she didn’t seem inclined to elaborate, he said, “I hope you have had rather more success than I.”

Another smile, rueful this time. “Not really, unless going in circles is a success.”

Hux gave a small, mirthless chuckle, pinching the bridge of his nose to try and dull the stabbing pain in his head. “Yes, that certainly sounds familiar.”

They were trying to talk their way around each other, he knew, feeling out one another’s edges, trying to work out which threads could be tugged at to see if they would unravel. It was a slow, precarious dance that Hux was used to: trying to verbally wedge a knife beneath the other’s armour while giving away as little as possible oneself. With Rey, however, he suspected she was doing it in an attempt at saving his feelings, gauging how he might react. It was oddly touching in a baffling sort of way, even if Hux had absolutely no idea what to do with this realisation.

“You’re in pain.” It was a statement rather than a question, and for some reason it made his hackles go up.

“How perceptive of you. I assume you didn’t need the Force to sense that.”

Something subtle flickered beneath her face, an expression that struggled to rise to the surface before she damped it down. She looked away, her jaw working as though she were chewing over a litany of unspoken retorts. Then suddenly, all in a rush, “I want to make it very clear that what happened was not my intention. I would never just – invite myself into someone’s head without permission. I don’t know what happened – ”

“You _don’t know_?” His voice sharpened unintentionally. He found himself giving a guilty, hunted glance in Poe’s direction, made eye contact with him, before looking back at Rey, lowering his voice to a hiss. “You don’t _know_?”

The edges of her mouth compressed in a way that made her look briefly recalcitrant, almost mulish. “How was I supposed to know you were Force sensitive if you didn’t tell me?”

“I am _not_ – ” he began hotly, before he caught himself again, breathed out impatiently through his nose. He leant closer to her, his voice a furious whisper. “I can assure you I most certainly am _not_ Force sensitive. Do you honestly think the Supr – that Snoke would have allowed a resource like that to go unexploited?”

“I didn’t mean it as an insult.” She shook her head, almost dismissing. “And besides, you told me yourself that Snoke forbid Kylo Ren from reading your mind.”

“Yes, and that was _Ren_. Snoke certainly didn’t stint on violating my thoughts on a daily basis. How can you imagine that two of the most powerful Force users to rise in decades would have been oblivious to such an aberration? I served that void-forsaken ghoul and his pet for years.”

“That’s how you see it? An aberration? General, you don’t need to be afraid of it. It doesn’t even necessarily mean that you’re strong in the Force – ”

“Stop proselytizing,” he snapped. Again that stubborn tensing of her mouth. She looked away, towards where Finn and Tico were petting the strange half-mechanical dog.

“Did you know that Finn has heard it calling him too?” she said at last, still looking across the camp. “It’s not my secret to tell, but there it is. He was scared as well, to begin with.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Hux said. He suddenly felt almost unendurably weary, exhausted to the very depths of his bones.

“Because I don’t know how else what happened between us – happened.” She sighed, stretched her leanly-muscled arms out in front of her, laced her fingers and rolled her hands outwards until her palms were facing away from her, cracked her knuckles. It was a gesture that Hux had once found vaguely threatening; now he realised it was a sort of stress tic of hers.

He rested his head against his hand again, allowing his eyes to briefly droop. The sunlight was driving pain into his eye socket with the assiduous focus of a migraine, and he was starting to feel faintly nauseous. He suspected he was slightly concussed, longed to sleep it off, but the prospect of closing his eyes even for a moment filled him with dread. He was sure that he would see the thing in the snakegrass field etched inside the darkness of his head, its shape in the shadows blacker than the deepest vaults of the firmament. Don’t be afraid, Rey had told him, but he was, throat-closingly, blood-freezingly so. The Force was a terrifying variable in a galaxy that seemed to flex around it only in the most arbitrary of ways, conforming to no mandate, no regulation. It was anathema to everything Hux had ever put his faith in.

“For what it’s worth, I have no regrets.” Rey’s voice brought him out of himself. He blinked a little, trying to refocus his eyes. She was watching him, her expression hovering somewhere between the apologetic and the determined. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said, firmly, as though expecting him to argue.

“I rather think your princess would have been of more help given the circumstances,” he said wryly.

Rey smiled. “I certainly wish I could ask her advice,” she said. “But – maybe you and I can figure it out somehow.”

“Perhaps. Although I would be glad of no further _visions_.”

“Agreed.” She saw his gaze drop to the tree branch resting across her knees and put her hand on it fondly.

“This is a good stick,” she said. She grinned at him. “I like sticks.” Her eyes moved past him. “Think you’ve got a visitor.”

Sweet stars, he must be more muddled in the head than he’d thought – he hadn’t even noticed Poe’s shadow falling across him. He was holding the little tin the togruta girl had been working with, and he looked infuriatingly attractive. Dammit it wasn’t _fair_ ; Hux needed all his faculties sharply at his disposal if he was going to cope with Dameron being handsome like this.

Rey used her new stick to haul herself to her feet. “Thank you for talking with me,” she said to Hux. “Try and get some rest, okay?” She looked at Poe. “Try and make him get some rest, _okay_?”

“Got it, chief.” Poe watched Rey leave before he made a little shuffling motion with his boot, nudging at Hux’s feet. “Move your legs.”

Hux gave him a perplexed look but obliged, shifting sideways on the upturned crate he was sitting on. Poe set the tin down, before kneeling in the space vacated by Hux’s legs. “I’m just gonna brush your knee, is that okay?”

“Do I still have dirt on me?” Hux tried to lean forward to see, regretted it straight away as a roll of a dizziness made him put his hand on Poe’s shoulder.

“Just a bit.” Poe took his time, making a thorough job of it. Hux held very still in a tolerating sort of way as Poe brushed down one knee, then the other, his hand eventually coming to rest against the top of Hux’s thigh.

“Do you think you got all of it?” Hux said, very dry. Poe’s smile was slow, a little overwhelming.

“Kinda just wanted the excuse to feel you up a bit. I like touching you.”

“Evidently so.”

“How’s your neck feel?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Your neck. Is it stiff at all? Sore?”

“I – don’t think so.”

“Can I see?” He lifted his hands, holding Hux’s eye contact.

Hux blinked, feeling almost hypnotised. He gave a tiny nod.

Poe cupped him gently beneath his jaw, his touch featherlight. The slight pressure of his callused fingertips was cool and very tactile, making the infinitesimal hairs on the back of Hux’s neck shiver into vibrancy. He shut his eyes, more overwhelmed than ever, took an unsteady breath.

“You okay?” Poe’s voice, close in the darkness behind his lids. Warm. Safe.

Hux licked his lips. “Yes.”

He let Poe’s hands manipulate him carefully, turning his head left, then right, asking him with each motion, “How does this feel? That hurt?” He got Hux to tip his head slowly forward so that his chin touched his chest, then roll it backwards so he was looking up at the tree canopy above them, all the while clasping him gently under his jaw, his thumbs resting against the pulse points beneath Hux’s ears.

“Does it make you feel dizzy?”

“A little.”

“Okay – I’m gonna put my hand over your left eye. How’s that feel?”

“It’s fine.”

“And this?”

Poe’s hand moved from left to right, Hux’s vision briefly eclipsing once more as Poe’s palm settled over his other eye. This time, Hux’s sight blurred and doubled, Poe’s face shifting out of focus.

“That side different?”

“Yes, but – I’m a little short-sighted out of that eye anyway. It might just be that.” His face was starting to feel hot.

“That’s okay. Bet you look really cute in glasses.”

Hux snorted, which made his head hurt more. Poe must have felt him wince beneath his hand because he moved it now, coming to rest at the back of Hux’s neck.

“Gonna get you to lie down for a bit,” he said. There was a low, rough texture to his voice that Hux had only ever heard him use in darkness before now: in the bar on the _Finalizer_ , last night under the old tree. He was looking down at where Hux’s hands were resting in his lap; somehow Poe’s free hand had slipped its way between them. Hux found that he was entirely disinclined to let him go.

He said, “We can’t trust these people.” Poe glanced up at him. His eyes were dark and liquid in the shifting, dappled light.

“I think they’re good, for now. I don’t think they know who we are. Dunno if they even get the HoloNet out here. The kid gave me some medicine for you.”

“The human keeps looking at me.”

“It’s not a crime to look, Hugs.”

“We can’t allow ourselves to let our guard down.”

“I know.” He was stroking Hux’s hand, across his palm and then down along each of his fingers. Even through the leather of his gloves the sensation was distracting. “But they might be able to help us. Give us information. And you need to rest up.”

Hux sighed. The prospect of sleep sounded inexpressibly attractive.

“Can I ask you something?” Poe was looking down at their joined hands again. A sliver of Hux’s bare wrist was exposed between the cuff of his sleeve and the top of his glove, and Poe’s fingers kept venturing towards it as he stroked over Hux’s palm, never quite touching.

Hux felt the corner of his mouth turn up as he watched Poe’s face, looking at how the heavy, dark fringe of his lashes cast little shades on his cheeks. “I don’t know. Can you?”

Poe’s thumb slid along the edge of Hux’s cuff. “On a scale of one to ten. One being – an absolute disaster. Ten being – mind-blowing. How would you rate our kiss last night?”

Hux almost laughed outright at that, had to glance away a moment to school his face. “I’m _sorry_?”

“Hey, it’s a perfectly valid question.”

“It’s a ridiculous question.”

“I’m just curious, is all.” Poe shrugged in what was clearly a pretence at being casual. “It was kinda, totally, basically incredibly hot from where I was standing. Sitting. Something.”

Hux sighed again, impatient this time. “I’d give it a five.”

He thought Poe was going to fall over backwards. “A _five_?”

“Look, I don’t exactly have an extensive frame of reference – ”

“Hang on, hang on, a _five_? Are you _kidding_ me? No one has ever given me a _five_ in my entire life.”

“Oh, so you regularly ask people to rate your kissing abilities, do you?”

“A _five_? _Hugs_.”

“Five is a perfectly reasonable score.”

“Babe, I’d have been kicked out of flight school for a _five_.”

“Is that how the Republic grades their pilots?”

“Kriffing _five_. I’d have thought you were a ten out of ten or go home kinda guy. Why are you even still _talking_ to me if all I gave you was a _five_?”

“In an _aptitude_ score, perhaps. Not for something as trivial as _kissing_.”

“Whoa, whoa, _whoa_.” Poe held his hands up, pantomiming horror. “Let's not get crazy. Kissing isn't _trivial_. It’s totally one of the best things ever invented and something that until _extremely recently_ I thought I was pretty damn good at.”

Hux blinked. “I didn’t say you were _bad_ at it.” He wasn’t sure if Poe was genuinely offended and it was starting to make him feel flustered.

Poe shook his head, but he was grinning now. “Okay, what about the first one?”

“The what?”

“The first one. In the cantina. I bought you imaginary tea.”

“ _Oh_.” Hux couldn’t quite keep the eyeroll out of his voice. “Well, at least that one was indoors. I suppose I can stretch to a six for that.”

“Six? Kriff Hugs, you’re killing me here. Can I take an average?”

“Five point five?” Hux said, very dry.

“Shit, I’m not good at math. What do I need to do to score a ten?”

Hux gave a haughty little sniff. “You could stop talking so much for a start.”

“Hey, that can be arranged. This mouth has lots of other uses.”

“You’re _insufferable_ ,” Hux said.

“Have you met you?”

They smiled at each other like a secret, looking into one other’s eyes.

“You have no idea how much I want to kiss you right now,” Poe said. His thumb was skimming the edge between cuff and bare skin. Hux could feel the soft drag of it back and forth through his glove, the occasional, subtle graze of it against his flesh. Sometimes it felt as though Poe had lit a fuse along the parched channels of his nervous system, and now he was alive to sensations he had never even known existed.

He said, his voice a little rough, “There is a time and a place, Dameron.”

“I’ll give you a _five_ ,” Poe muttered.

Hux said, “You’d better,” and the smile Poe gave him made everything, everything worth – _something_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'D'bhem' is the Togruti word for 'love'.


	22. Lodestar

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who is still sticking with me. I'm insanely overdue replying to a bunch of comments but every single one makes me do a big dumb grin.

Dusk was falling, the sun’s icy reflection beginning to bathe the sky clean, by the time Rey left the edge of the camp and headed back into the woods.

She wasn’t sure what exactly she was looking for – she had a vague, compulsive idea in her head about _evidence_ , something that could be recorded and held onto – but she felt it had to be found, and quickly, or it might crumble away from her, like the rudimentary footholds in a clay cliff edge that shiver away the faster you climb. As she walked, she became aware of how the hard leather of her boots was pressing into the heels of her bare feet, but she made herself push on through the pain of it until it began to feel almost familiar.

She found herself looking up at the sky as she walked, its indigo depths already seaswept with stars. Like Jint, this planet held two moons in its satellite, the vast silver disc of the greater of the two eclipsing the iridescent silhouette of its smaller twin. She looked for so long that she had a sense of falling, as though the soles of her feet might detach themselves from the earth and send her tipping end over end off into darkness. A vertigo of insignificance washed over her, a sense of being appraised from such a distance that she could be blotted out with a fingertip, and she almost put out her hand as though she could touch the sleek curve of the greater moon’s edge, thinking it would be just warm to the skin where her blood cooled against the surface.

She began working backwards in an approximation of their route along the energy field hours ago, looking for signs of disturbance in the earth, tracks or marks or scuffled leaves, anything that might indicate the creature had gone through here. More than once, she found herself looking quickly over her shoulder as she progressed further into the trees, knowing she was imagining the eyes she felt on her. Whatever it was, it had gone. She realised this with a certainty that puzzled her, as though it came from an atavistic knowledge like the seeking persistence of hunger or the muscle memory of pain.

As pine began to sparse into birchwood, she found what might be the first trace – a smooth, oval scorch mark, running lengthways across the silver trunk of a nearby tree. It had whorled down to the tender flesh beneath the hard outer bark, exposing the white, luminescent arteries of the tree’s core. Rey ran her fingers across it, then looked down and beyond where the birch’s roots would reach. There were no signs of recent disturbance in the damp earth, apart from the faint prints of the group’s boots from where they had followed the wire hours ago. Far ahead in the distance, burnished dusklight was just beginning to coalesce along the crooked edges of a building with a red tower, its outline like a jagged wave-break amidst the hosts of ashen trees.

The puncture in the fence was up ahead somewhere. Rey moved off, keeping her eyes on the ground, occasionally shifting her gaze to the trees around her as she paced slowly, aware of the cold shift in the wind as she tacked northward, the ground beginning to incline. There was a small mark in a tree at head-height, but she couldn’t tell if it was burn or nick; still, the exposed sapwood looked new.

She kept the setting sun on her left as she followed the path uphill. She could hear rain up in the tree canopy, but the air around her was filled only with the steady drip of gathered water, dampening her hair and her skin. There was a solitary birdcall up ahead of her, a high, trilling, repetitive note she couldn’t identify, and she walked quickly, rhythmically, spacing out her steps and counting in-between. The path bisected itself just beyond where she stooped to duck beneath the outstretched limb of an ivy-strangled tree, one branch slipping along adjacent to the hillside, gleaming with rainfall; the other heading straight upwards towards the peak of the hill. No more scorch marks. Rey chose the second path, digging in, her breath sharp and quick in her head, her heartbeat a painful pressure beneath her sternum. She knew the hilltop plateaued before it ascended the lower reaches of the mountain proper; she had been able to see from the escarpment where the _Falcon_ had come down that the trees thinned out there, growing scattergun amidst the chalky silhouette of a boulder field. She would be able to see the entire valley basin from there.

She pushed herself harder, feeling the burn in her thighs, wanting it.

She had done this on Ahch-To, on Ajan Kloss, on Jint: walked until her blood burned in her veins and her breath was an ocean wave in her ears, and all she could think about was the merciless rhythm of it, the punishing miles, until the only thought in her head was the echo of her own footsteps and the only feeling she was sensible of was the bone-deep ache of exertion. It had been simpler on Jakku, the necessity of surviving piecemeal from one day to the next consuming every fizz and snap of her synapses. Now she walked until she was too tired to think.

She put up her hand as she reached the top of the hill, shading her eyes as she looked against the light. The deep bruise of the oncoming darkness lay at her back, her shadow falling in a thin, straight line behind her.

There was a swift wind up here, the rain falling around her in staccato waves, but she shrugged off her jacket, exposing the bare lines of her arms. Her hands moved methodically as she checked the safety on her blaster before unfastening her gun belt and letting it drop to the ground next to her jacket. She flexed her right hand where it hung empty at her side: her lightsabre hand. Counted until she felt her heart rate slow to a rhythm inside her. She felt as though she were aware on some primeval level of the subtle, core-deep tremor of the planet’s vast turning as it spun endlessly through space, as though if she listened closely enough she might detect the tick of the universe’s great heart or the draw of its lungs, like the sea-shell roar of her own blood.

There were a hundred things she could have done differently.

She made a fist with her sabre hand, abruptly furious with herself. If she had brought the _Falcon_ alone to reach the _Finalizer_ , if the Resistance had never limped its tattered way to Jint in the first place, if she could truly look her own reflection in the eyes and know the mirror of herself she had seen in Kylo Ren had died with him on Exegol. _If_. But when she blinked she saw the shade of that creature against the silvered grass, felt again the waiting, watchful presence through that half-open door, and the pressure grew like the coal-heart of a furnace beneath her ribcage. She felt if it burst it would slough away an entire layer of her skin, her personhood, revealing someone entirely unfamiliar beneath – not the girl from Jakku who tried to wear the name _Skywalker_ like an ill-fitting cloak – someone terrible, on fire.

She was burning with it as she looked back across the valley, her face hot, her eyes wind-bitten.

She had been watching Hux change in the Force for days, the colours at his edges growing brighter, sharper, the current of turmoil at his core a question that he was asking himself over and over, unable or afraid to fathom out the answer. She had recognised what was happening before, she knew, even he did; the space where the Force thrummed and shimmered between him and Poe gleamed like a wash of starlight, the threads of some indelible seal etched in eternity gathering closer, tauter, drawing them together as surely as though their spirits were stitched along their seams, one to the other. Poe had always been transparent, vibrant, devoted – she could almost hear his emotions like a voice in her head and so any change in him was less starkly noticeable. But Hux – Hux was _falling_ , as hopelessly, as irrecoverably, as stepping over the edge and into the void.

When he had looked at her on the _Finalizer_ , his face naked with grief, had almost begged her, “ _What happened_?” – she had shown him. Because even though Kylo Ren, Sidious, the red-toothed spectre of herself she had met in the ruins of the Death Star were all dead – reaching her hand into that well of darkness inside her still felt as natural as drawing breath.

She gathered herself back together, and went to look for the things she needed.

The rocks here were smooth, small in her palm with undulating edges and riven through with dark whorls of magma, relics of the valley’s glacial past. She found three that vaguely satisfied her and set about marking her perimeter, pacing out twenty steps in each direction before she set the rock down to claim the spot. Turning back, she paced her way to the centre again, where her stick and jacket and gun belt were resting. She lifted the stick experimentally, pleased with the heft of it. She had used her knife to skim it of leaves and twigs, but the surface still needed work until it would be smooth. She could probably carve the topmost part of it to make it more handleable, improve the grip. It would do for now anyway.

The wind had picked up as the sun crept towards the horizon, but Rey’s muscles were already singing in anticipation and her blood was up, hot beneath her skin. In her hands, the stick was lighter than her old cannibalised quarterstaff, but far heavier than the lightsabre she had broken the staff down to create. The whip of it through the air had none of the biting sharpness, the wind high and loud in her ears instead of the thrumming drone of the plasma, but its length imitated the thing well, and that was what she needed at the moment – _imitation_ , a pretence at what she really was. She cut, stepped, parried, imagining the invisible duck and weave of an opponent, their steps matching hers quicktime, their gaze telling her where they would dip next, where their blade would swing. She thrust to the side, feinting away, feeling the unseen slice of a burning sabre past her cheek. Unthinkingly, she had fallen into the steps of her final battle with Kylo Ren, but it was not always his face she saw in her head. Sometimes it was her own, flame-eyed and sharp-toothed, and the dual blades of the weapon she had come so close to constructing washed the fading light in red.

Rey swung and wheeled and deflected, her arms aching, her lungs burning, seeing in her mind’s eye not the pale gold of her own lightsabre but the blue-white of Luke’s, now entombed beneath the sands of Tatooine. The blade of her imaginary opponent cut near her face, and she thought she could feel the heat of the kyber crystal.

As she danced, her limbs moving on autopilot, she let her mind expand outwards, filling every corner of the perimeter she had set up. She felt the Force against the edges of her consciousness like a sea shore after the great swell of the tide recedes, open and expanded, fathomless, dwindling to infinity on a piercing horizon. She quickstepped around herself, but the face of her opponent merged, Kylo Ren, Ben, her own, and it made her stumble, catching herself on the down swing, almost tripping over her own feet. Her teeth bared in a snarl, she thrust forward, driving the stick into empty air, feeling the Force flex and shift around her as though responding to the rapid, changing thunderhead of her emotions. All around her the dusk was filling with pale trembling air.

Closing her eyes, she concentrated her mind, reaching out into the cold for the tiniest of projections, groping with blind tendrils of thought for the shimmering edges of the cowl of building heat. She plucked at it as she circled and stabbed, sensing an echo of warmth but losing it again before she could trace its source. Frustrated, her mind veered off in the wrong direction, plunging recklessly into the gathering night, found dark and emptiness, and recoiled, shivering, hating itself. Again, she strove out, holding her breath, trying to pinpoint the minute changes in the air pressure around her, and with great effort at last she heard it: a high, thin whining, like the splintering of ice underfoot.

Leia had told her: when the Force was blighted by violence, or used destructively, or wielded without light, it could be wounded just as catastrophically as living flesh: a site in the firmament of space that drew pain and suffering into it like a black hole. But more, the Force could also carry pain _with_ it from place to place, could travel like a stream among rocks and divots, finding the path of least resistance to weave its corrupted way to the source, poisoning as it went. These open scars in the Force took on lives of their own, insidious, seeking, penetrating strands that spread along death-blighted channels like the roots of a perishing tree tracking its doomed heart’s blood to the reach of every limb.

This was what Rey was hearing now, and what she and Hux had seen in the snakegrass field. Somewhere in the great outpouring of grief and suffering that traced Exegol to its heart, Palpatine to the root of its wicked strings, a fragment of the Force had twisted and burned and turned black, its edges rotten, its core worse, and out if it had sprung a creature with iron in its teeth, a thing that looked Rey in the face just as she had looked her own image in the face on Kef Bir – both recognising each other.

She knew that Hux had felt it too, that sick, crawling ache of familiarity. He had plighted himself on the grave of the Hosnian System, just as she had condemned untold multitudes to a faceless doom with every step she took: one million lives spent in blood here to save two million lives there.

Whatever the Resistance was now, it was no longer recognisable as an adjacent to or even a mirror of what it was supposed to be. The New Republic had largely washed its hands of them, forcing them to slip from foxhole to foxhole like fugitives, always glancing over their shoulder. The agents had raided the Resistance camp on Ajan Kloss when the dust was still settling in the aftermath of their departure. It was almost like they had been waiting for them to flee, so the evidence would be all the more incriminating. However the New Republic intended to bring justice to a rebel princess, a Jedi with Sith blood in her veins, and the war criminal they harboured in their midst, they didn’t seem in a particular hurry to achieve it. Rather, their intention seemed to be to freeze them out, to cut them off, to lay the red letter of the pariah at their door so no other right-thinking corner of the galaxy would give them refuge.

All around her, she could feel the earth stirring, responding to the crackle of her energy, the fibres and joints of the planet’s body quickening into awareness. She could feel the Force lightning sleeping in her veins, accelerating on the edges of consciousness, dormant since Pasaana but livid and febrile as quicksilver in her blood. Finn hadn’t been able to look her in the eye since that moment, his gaze always finding a neutral spot just past her face whenever they spoke. Now he slipped around her instead of meeting her head on; the changes were subtle, almost impossible to pinpoint without her feeling as though she were being paranoid. Confronting him about it would have only cemented that feeling. She didn’t know what Finn saw when he looked at her now, when he really _looked_ at her instead of glancing just beyond her – if he could see her shape in the Force just as she saw his, and was afraid of what looked back at him. If somehow, when he had held her close to him when she returned from Exegol, wild-eyed and blood-stained, he had known that she was changed beyond recognition.

She brough the stick across herself in a sharp cut, feeling the snap of the disturbed air across her face. She was breathing hard, sweat standing on her skin in cold, stinging swathes.

She would be better. Stronger, swifter – unstoppable. And no more innocent blood would be spilled while she chased another monster.

At the edges of the perimeter she had made, she could feel something stirring – something soundless, stealthing its way around the ringing corners of the Force, feeling out her shape, drawn by her anger. The track of Rey’s feet had left scuff marks in the loose grit, and she doubled back on herself, stepping where she had stepped, the branch slick with perspiration in her hand, her pulse a hurtling, sharp-edged patina against her eardrums.

She could feel its gaze on her, the hidden, primal slide of its tongue against ancient teeth. It had been a long time since it had feasted, even longer since it had gorged itself on one such as her, and it could smell her power on the wind like a prowling thing that pauses, scenting, knowing it will take what it is owed. As she swung and cut and parried, she pushed all her hate out into the universe, imagining it flooding from her veins in dark-watered strands that fed the condemned earth here.

“Come on,” she said, her lips pulled back in a snarl. “Come and get me.”


End file.
